SHANGHAI (Agencies) — China's exports rose 25.1 percent in September from a year earlier to 144.99 billion U.S. dollars, but the pace of growth slowed from August's 34.4-percent surge, the Xinhua news agency quoted the General Administration of Customs (GAC) as saying Wednesday. This data is like to pressure Beijing to appreciate its currency.

The government said its monthly trade surplus reached $16.9 billion in September compared to August’s $20 billion. The exports for September were up 25 percent and imports climbing 24 percent.
China’s foreign trade in the first nine months totaled $2.15 trillion, a year on-year increase of 37.9 percent, the GAC said in a statement on its website.
Also Wednesday, Beijing said its foreign exchange reserves soared $194 billion in September to a record $2.65 trillion, far more than economists had forecast. China already had, by far, the world’s largest currency reserve holdings.
The gains show that China’s fast-growing economy is chugging along and that massive amounts of foreign capital continue to flow into the country, complicating Beijing’s economic policies and threatening to fuel inflation and asset bubbles.
In the United States, Europe, Japan and elsewhere, there are growing worries about China’s trade dominance and its effect on countries struggling to emerge from a sharp global slowdown.
Nowhere are those worries more intense than in Washington, where the administration of President Barack Obama and some members of Congress are pressing China to move more quickly to appreciate its currency, hoping such a move will temper Chinese exports by making them more costly while bolstering U.S. exports to China.
As congressional elections approach, with the U.S. unemployment rate high, some in Congress are threatening to impose heavy tariffs on imports from China because of the country’s currency policies. Some lawmakers believe China is intentionally manipulating its currency to gain trading advantages.
For its part, Beijing has said repeatedly that it intends to allow its currency to appreciate and fluctuate with market forces. But the government insists it has to move at its own pace. Too sharp a move, the government says, could create huge dislocations in the country’s coastal factory zones, which employ tens of millions of migrant workers. Xinhua reported that the yuan hit a new high against U.S. dollar Wednesday with the central parity rate of yuan set at 6.6693 per dollar, an increase of 2.32 percent since the Chinese central bank (People’s Bank of China) pledged to increase flexibility of the yuan exchange rate on June 19.
Beijing also argues that as the demand from the developed growth remained strong the Chinese exports will continue to grow and the world economy will not experience a double dip recession.
Trade with the EU, China’s largest trade partner, jumped 34.4 percent year on year to $349.49 billion in the January-September period, the GAC said.
Trade with the U.S. climbed 31.5 percent to $278.54 billion and with Japan rose 32.2 percent to $214.46 billion.
Chinese trade with ASEAN countries surged 43.7 percent year on year to $211.31 billion, GAC said.
Photo: Chinese workers stitch various clothes for export to Europe at a textile factory in Hefei, in eastern China's Anhui province on October 12, 2010. China's trade surplus shrank in September as growth in exports and imports slowed sharply, official data showed on October 13, but the decline was unlikely to ease pressure on Beijing for a stronger yuan. (Photo: Getty Images