He also pointed out that China's trade surplus dropped by 51 percent in the same period. That means China's gain in exports was outweighed by an import surge.

China began its currency reform to unpeg the yuan against the U.S. dollar in July 2005, the yuan has appreciated 21 percent against the U.S. dollar, or 16 percent in real terms.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said last Friday that China did not depreciate the yuan "from July 2008 to February 2009 when the global economy was in extreme trouble," instead, it appreciated the yuan "in real terms by 14.5 percent."

Secondly, would a sharp appreciation of the yuan cut the trade deficit against China as the West claims?

The answer is a clear "No."

In most cases, the deficit of some Western countries's trade with China originates from their trade policies and structure; therefore, pressing for the appreciation of the yuan will not help resolve the trade imbalance.

The trade between China and the United States is a good example.

The majority of China's exports to the United States are labor-intensive commodities, while U.S. exports to China are, in most cases, technology or capital-intesive high-value added products. This situation conforms to the principle of seeking comparative advantages in a free trade world.

However, Washington has long pursued a biased policy of limiting the sale of high technology and related products to China, leading to the trade imbalance across the Pacific.

Just as Steve Forbes put it, the United States started in the 1970s to put pressure on Japan to change the value of the yen. The result is that "the dollar today has fallen 75 percent against yen, and we still have a trade deficit."

What's more, the deficit of the West against China is not as "huge" as those people have claimed.

The West often ignores a very important fact: a majority of China's exports to the Western developed world are produced by foreign-funded companies or joint ventures with foreign partners, and huge profits go back into the pockets of the West.

Statistics show that, from 1995 to 2005, 62 percent of the increase of China's exports came from foreign-funded companies in China.

It is widely accepted that appreciating the yuan is, by no means, a catholicon to heal the trade imbalance.

"The dollar depreciated sharply against the currencies of Canada and the Eruozone after 2002, yet our bilateral deficit with both those regions continued to grow," said Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.