China's representative to the International Monetary Fund "regrets" changes to the fund's currency surveillance guidelines that were adopted this month despite objections from Beijing and other members, according to an interview published on Sunday.

"Such an important revision should be adopted with the maximum consensus. But since this revision was adopted without addressing the concerns of some developing countries, China had to withhold its support," Ge Huayong, Chinese representative to the IMF executive board, said in an interview published on the central bank's Web site (www.pbc.goc.cn).

"I regret this."

The IMF announced last week a new directive against foreign exchange policies that trigger external instability, in the first changes since 1977 to its currency monitoring framework. The changes are designed to move it away from its traditional focus on currency manipulation and intervention in currency markets.

The fund will take into consideration several criteria in deciding whether a foreign exchange policy is creating overseas instability, including large-scale intervention in exchange rates, fundamental exchange-rate misalignment and large and prolonged current account deficits or surpluses.

But it will not try to establish the intent of policies causing external instability. Traditionally, the IMF has tried to determine whether a country is actively intervening in currency markets to gain a trading advantage.

The new directive comes as the United States has been pushing China to allow the yuan to appreciate more quickly. The yuan has appreciated by 7 percent since July 2005, when China removed a decade-long peg and freed it to move within aband against a basket of currencies.

China's trading partners say an undervalued yuan unfairly advantages Chinese exports and contributes to its ballooning trade surplus, while Chinese officials stress the need to move gradually to prevent destabilizing shocks to its economy.

"Any country must first take into account its internal stability in its economic, financial and currency policies, and use that to build external stability. Pursuing external stability at the cost of internal stability is unsustainable," Ge said.

Realizing "systematic stability" is the most effective and practical way of integrating external and internal stability."

The new IMF principle is unsatisfactory, Ge said.

"This would produce heavier pressure for the majority of developing countries and particularly for those newly emerging markets, but it will not affect developed countries much, so the impartiality of the decision cannot be proven."

IMF board sources said last week that Egypt and Iran had also declined to support the revision, but the changes were approved despite their objections.