(Adds background)
By Marcin Grajewski
BRUSSELS, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Top euro zone officials will urge China this month to move towards a more flexible exchange rate policy but it will not be easy to introduce change soon, EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said on Thursday.
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, the chairman of euro zone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Almunia will travel to China at the end of November for talks on exchange rates.
"We will stress to the Chinese authorities the need to introduce a more flexible management of exchange rates," Almunia told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Brussels.
The Chinese yuan is virtually pegged to the U.S. dollar, trading in a 0.5 percent band on either side of a mid-point set daily by the Chinese central bank.
"We know it is not easy to change, in a short period of time, the way the yuan is managed," he said. "We agree with the Chinese authorities about the direction of changes needed."
Just like the U.S. currency, after a sharp rise in value in the second half of 2008, the yuan has been steadily weakening against the euro since March.
Europeans believe the yuan, backed by China's huge trade surplus, should be much stronger. The Group of Seven industrialised countries, which also includes the United States, Japan and Canada, sent a similiar message in October.
"China will be a key part of the solution to our economic problems, to the reduction of global imbalances," Almunia said.
An artificially weak Chinese currency gives the Asian economy a trade advantage with the euro zone and the United States and builds up its foreign currency reserves which China then invests in U.S. bonds.
China has amassed $2.27 trillion of foreign reserves, the world's largest stockpile, and analysts think about two-thirds of this is invested in dollar-denominated assets.
This, in turn, lowers the cost of financing debt for the U.S. and helps boost the U.S. budget deficit and discourages U.S. savings, augmenting the global trade-savings imbalances.
The three euro zone officials made a similar trip to China to discuss exchange rates in late 2007 following which, in December 2007, the yuan rose sharply.
China has repeatedly said it would gradually liberalise its tightly controlled foreign exchange market, allowing the yuan to move more freely, but that reforms will be conducted at a pace which does not destabilise its economy.
The yuan was revalued by 2.1 percent to 8.11 per dollar on July 21, 2005. In the three years following the revaluation, the central bank allowed the yuan to appreciate a further 19 percent against the dollar. The yuan's traded peak since the revaluation was 6.8099, reached on Sept. 23, 2008.
Since July 2008, however, the central bank has used the mid-point to keep the yuan at a virtual peg to the dollar within a narrow 100-pip range, to protect China's economy as it confronted a slowdown due to the global financial crisis.
China's Commerce Ministry on Monday rebuffed calls for the yuan to appreciate, signalling resistance to change foreign exchange policy.
Outside pressure has been building on Beijing to let the yuan rise after more than a year of it being nearly frozen in place against the dollar, with the latest appeal voiced by the head of the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday.
But Chinese officials have swatted down speculation of any big moves soon, and the government appears likely to keep the currency on a tight rein at least until the middle of 2010 to cement the country's economic recovery. (Reporting by Marcin Grajewski, writing by Jan Strupczewski, editing by Dale Hudson; Editing by Toby Chopra)