After unpegging its currency from the US dollar last June, China is allowing the Yuan to rise slowly. The US has long criticized the country’s routine to depreciate its currency to preserve its products’ competitiveness on the global markets.

While the Yuan is gaining on the dollar, China still uses a variety of tools to keep its currency value down, among them reserve requirement ratios, open market operations and dabbling in interest rates. The US is now urging the country to let it currency gain to a higher extend.

Since June, the Yuan gained 5.1% in comparison to the dollar before the People’s Bank of China fixed the parity rate at 6.5013 Yuan per dollar, choosing a rate above the psychological salient level of 6.5. Experts expect the Yuan to only rise slightly before the bilateral meeting on economic and currency policy taking place next week.

In the meeting, the US is expected to demand that China will step up currency appreciation, creating a healthier environment for foreign business, as well as drive forward their financial industry reforms.

The state bank says that fighting inflation remains one of its top tasks. China’s four largest state-owned banks did only allow a slight rise in lending from 242 billion Yuan to 260.6 billion Yuan in order to keep currency deprecation at bay.