PBOC Says Reports on Yuan, Plan to Ask on U.S. Rates Incorrect

China’s central bank rebutted news media reports this week about its exchange-rate policies and planned interactions with U.S. counterparts.

The People’s Bank of China reiterated its commitment to market reforms and to allowing greater two-way flexibility in the yuan’s exchange rate, in a statement posted on its official Weibo social media account. The PBOC will keep the yuan at a "reasonable and balanced level," it said in the statement.

The PBOC said two recent articles by foreign media had “fabricated facts" and “misled readers and financial markets," and that it reserved the right to take legal actions. The central bank identified the articles by their titles, without naming the media outlets that published them.

One of those was a Bloomberg News article published Wednesday that reported Chinese officials planned to ask about the timing of a U.S. interest-rate increase at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialog in Beijing next month. A press officer for the PBOC had denied the Bloomberg report late Wednesday and again on Thursday.

The other article cited in Friday’s statement was a Wall Street Journal story from Monday that reported the PBOC had on Jan. 4 "ditched the market-based mechanism" for the yuan, and returned to adjusting its daily value higher or lower to suit officials’ objectives.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Malcolm Scott in Hong Kong at mscott23@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Christopher Anstey at canstey@bloomberg.net, John Liu at jliu42@bloomberg.net.