(Corrects second references to adviser to ...Fan... throughout)
SHANGHAI, March 24 (Reuters) - China's yuan is still under pressure to appreciate as there is increasing threat of inflation in the United States and the dollar has potential to depreciate, a Chinese central bank adviser said in remarks published on Tuesday.
The announcement by the U.S. Federal Reserve last week that it would buy $300 billion in Treasuries in the next six months is aimed at injecting base money, but that may not have an immediate effect on the U.S. economy, Fan Gang, who sits on the central bank's monetary policy advisory committee, was quoted as saying.
"Inflation threat is on the rise in the United States and the trend for the yuan to appreciate may not change," Fan was quoted by the official China Securities Journal as saying.
"Liquidity is increasing in the United States at a pace faster than China, and the U.S. dollar has a potential to depreciate," Fan said, adding that a trend for the economy to recover earlier in China than in the United States was also adding pressure for the yuan to appreciate.
Fan said China should be able to achieve the target for its economy to grow eight percent this year but was still faced with external adversity. He added he did not agree with suggestions to use yuan depreciation to help boost the economy.
Some parts of China's economy showed improvement in February, such as surging investment and money supply, but the country's exports and foreign investment remained in a steep downtrend in the month, sparking calls from some domestic circles to use yuan depreciation to help boost external trade.
But senior officials, including those from the central bank, have vowed to keep the yuan stable during the current global financial crisis in a move partly to prevent competitive depreciation that may help spark mass capital outflows.
The central People's Bank of China has also used its system of yuan mid-point, or reference rate, and occasional indirect intervention in trading, to keep the yuan in a narrow range of 6.8100 to 6.8800 against the dollar since July last year. (Reporting by Lu Jianxin; Editing by Jerry Norton)