A government think tank said there is no basis for a major appreciation for the Renminbi exchange rate, an official financial newspaper reported Monday.

"Although there is no basis for a major appreciation in the yuan exchange rate, we still need to pay close attention to the exchange rate and the international speculative 'hot money,'" China Securities Journal quoted the State Information Center as saying.

The yuan has strengthened 0.7 percent versus the US dollar since the central bank said June 19 it would end a two-year peg to the dollar and manage the exchange rate with reference to a currency basket.

By July 1, the currency had risen to 6.78 against the US dollar, the highest level since it started trading in 2005.

The previous high was in July 2008, just before the People's Bank of China (PBC) forced the RMB's value down to 6.83 to the dollar.

Central bank adviser Zhou Qiren said that the nation will let the yuan weaken if exports fall sharply, according to an interview published July 21.

For a long time, China has been under great pressure from the US and European Union to appreciate.

Some overseas critics and manufacturers say the country's undervalued exchange rate is an artificial boost for China's export industry.

Between 2000 and 2007, China's share of global manufacturing output soared from 5.7 percent to 11.4 percent.

The General Administration of Customs announced Saturday that exports in June rose 43.9 percent from a year earlier, beating forecasts of a 38 percent increase.

In 2009, China overtook Germany as the world's leading exporter and posted a trade surplus of $19.53 billion in May, up from $1.68 billion in the previous month.

"The PBC aims to publish the nominal effective exchange rate and this should gradually become a reference for exchange-rate adjustments," Deputy Governor Hu Xiaolian said Monday in a statement on the central bank's website.

"These indexes are typically weighted according to the amount of trade a nation has with its partners and aren't adjusted for inflation," Hu said.

In June, US President Obama said he expected the yuan to rise "significantly", and the US government wants the Chinese currency to revalue at 27.5 percent.

The central parity rate of the yuan rose to 6.7778 versus the dollar Monday from 6.7790 per the dollar Friday, according to data released by the China Foreign Exchange Trading System.

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