PBOC’s Lu Lei: China Has No Need, No Intention to Weaken Yuan for Trade Edge

Lu Lei's remarks are best read as an expectations-management exercise rather than a policy shift: by explicitly ruling out depreciation as a trade tool, the PBOC is trying to short-circuit the kind of self-reinforcing one-way bet it flagged as a risk. The signal matters most for anyone holding yuan exposure or pricing cross-border trade, since the managed-float framework leaves room for intervention while the language leans on market formation. Whether the verbal pushback is enough to anchor expectations, given the emphasis on guarding against herd behavior, is the open question.