A drastic revaluation of the yuan may suit the interests of international speculators but could trigger a financial crisis in China, a senior economist has warned.

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Lin Yifu, director of the China Centre for Economic Research (CCER) at Peking University, made the remarks at a forum held by the institute on Sunday and rejected the claim that the renminbi is grossly undervalued.

If the Chinese currency were seriously undervalued, the ratio of the trade surplus to the overall trade volume should be very high, which was not the case, Lin explained in an article published on the CCER website.

In 2005, the ratio was 7.2 percent. During the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and 1998, when there was strong pressure for the yuan to be depreciated, the figures were 12.4 and 13.4 percent.

From another perspective, if the yuan were seriously undervalued, the ratio of the trade surplus to the gross domestic product (GDP) should also be much higher than that in other Asian countries.

But China's ratio is much lower than in Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand or Japan.

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