* Aussie, kiwi lose ground after RBA says rates right for now
* Yen holds near 7-week high vs dollar, steady on crosses
* Official Chinese PMI gives cross/yen brief lift
By Kaori Kaneko
TOKYO, Sept 1 (Reuters) - The yen held near a seven-week peak on the dollar on Tuesday, while the Australian dollar slipped after its central bank sounded less hawkish than some had anticipated.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), holding its cash rate at 3.0 percent as expected, said the current low level of rates was appropriate, countering speculation it would adopt an explicit tightening bias.
"It looks like people who had aggressively priced in the idea that Australia would increase rates soon trimmed their holdings of the Aussie slightly," said Ayako Sera, market strategist at Sumitomo Trust & Banking.
"But as the central bank sees the economy as stronger than expected, the market hasn't changed its view that Australia will be the first to normalise its monetary policy," she said.
The Australian dollar fell 0.2 percent on the day to $0.8418, after edging up close to last month's 11-month peak at $0.8479 ahead of the central bank's statement.
Fellow higher-yielder the New Zealand dollar also backed down after the RBA statement, slipping from just below August's 11-month peak at $0.6898 to $0.6879, although it was still up 0.4 percent on the day.
"I think the Reserve Bank has tried not to give too much extra guidance to the market; there's been no explicit change in their bias," said Riki Polygenis, an economist at ANZ Bank.
"You can interpret that as the RBA hedging its bets, clearly rates need to increase from here, but at this point in time the timing is still uncertain," she said.
Financial markets are pricing in 174 basis points of rate hikes in the next 12 months, down from nearly 200 they were expecting earlier on Tuesday.
The yen held at 93.07 per dollar, little changed from late New York levels but below Monday's seven-week high of 92.54 set on trading platform EBS.
Its rise on Monday came in the wake of a victory by Japan's opposition Democratic Party in elections at the weekend, which helped push it through chart levels and triggered stop losses.
Foreign investors turned net buyers of Japanese equities in April and buying accelerated in mid-July and the first two weeks of August, totalling 1.37 trillion yen ($14.7 billion) in that period, before turning negative in the third week.
Tohru Sasaki, chief FX strategist for Japan at JP Morgan, said Japanese investors wanted to see whether foreigners would take the change in government as positive.
"People are worrying about dollar/yen and the most popular topic is if foreign investors' Japanese stock purchases continue or not," Sasaki said.
The yen's gains on Monday were also helped by a fall in the volatile Shanghai share market, which prompted investors to reduce exposure to currencies viewed as more risky.
Shares around the region were mostly positive on Tuesday and data from China showed activity in the manufacturing sector in expansion mode for the six month in a row, giving a slight lift to commodity-related currencies against the yen.
The Aussie later shed its gains to stand unchanged at 78.34 yen but the New Zealand dollar rose 0.4 percent to 63.91 yen.
The euro was up 0.2 percent at 133.81 yen and rose 0.3 percent to $1.4376. (Additional reporting by Charlotte Cooper in Tokyo, Anirban Nag in Sydney; Editing by Chris Gallagher)