The Asia Pacific Economic Coop-eration (APEC) group of nations' talks on member-states' currency policies aren't just being directed at China, said Zembei Mizoguchi, Japan's vice finance minister for international affairs.
"It's not just a China issue," he said.
"Some countries adopt a system of pegging their currencies to other currencies and some countries keep a system similar to a fixed-rate foreign-exchange system," Mizoguchi said.
The Hong Kong dollar and Malaysian ringgit, like the yuan, are both pegged to the US dollar, while Singapore manages its currency against a basket of those of its major trading partners.
Japan sold a record ?9 trillion (US$78 billion) this year to prevent the yen from strengthening, and the US General Accounting Office said last month it is investigating whether Taiwan and South Korea did likewise.
Finance ministers from the APEC member states are currently discussing the wording of a statement to be released tomorrow regarding currency policies.
"We will try to use terminology that would be acceptable to each nation," Mizoguchi said.
Meanwhile, Chinese officials were keeping a low profile Thursday at a Pacific rim finance ministers meeting here, apparently besieged by international pressure to revalue their currency, officials said.
Chinese Vice Minister of Finance Jiwei Lou attended the opening sessions of the two-day APEC forum, but he and his underlings have steered clear of the spotlight after a week in which Tokyo and Washington called for Beijing to ease controls on the yuan.
"They do not want to talk about anything," a Thai liaison officer said. "Maybe next time."
The yuan has been tied to the US dollar for nearly a decade and has fallen in tandem with the US currency in recent months, giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage, according to critics.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told Pacific rim finance ministers Thursday that their economies needed to create "close regional synergy" to fight global threats such as terrorism.
Thaksin, in an opening speech to the 21 ministers of the APEC group meeting here, said nations needed to do more to fight new threats to economic stability in the region.
Thaksin also pressed in his address for closer monetary cooperation in APEC economies via the Asian Bond initiative.
"The Asian Bond will be the new financial architecture for this world of differences," providing a "rational option as a savings instrument for us" to ensure that Asia's wealth is used to boost prosperity in the region.
"The candle has been lit," he said of the Asian Bond initiative. "The torch must now be kept burning ever more brightly."
Issues on the official agenda at the two-day talks here include the pursuit of broader regional cooperation, small-and medium-sized enterprise development, progress on an Asian bond market and breaking up terrorist-financing networks.
The ministers were due to sign off on a joint declaration Thursday, to be released at the end of the conference Friday, which sources have said will touch on regional exhange rate policies.
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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