BEIJING, China (AP):

China's surging trade surplus jumped 67 per cent in January from the same month last year to US$15.88 billion, the General Administration of Customs said Monday.

China's trade gap has soared as the country has become the world's low-cost manufacturing centre, cranking out toys, shoes and other goods, but the surplus has been accompanied by complaints China keeps the value of its currency artificially low to make its products more competitive.

That criticism was repeated over the weekend by finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven industrialised nations at a meeting in Germany.

"In emerging economies with large and growing current account surpluses, especially China, it is desirable that their effective exchange rates move so that necessary adjustments will occur," they said in a communiqué.

China's exports hit US$86.62 billion, up 33 per cent from January 2006, while imports totalled US$70.74 billion, up 27.5 per cent from a year earlier, the customs bureau said.

It did not say how the data may have been affected by the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls in February this year. Last year part of the holiday fell in January, when the surplus was US$9.49 billion. December's surplus was $21 billion.

Jumped nearly 75 per cent

For all of 2006, China's global trade surplus jumped nearly 75 per cent from the previous year to a record US$177.5 billion.

The United States has been pushing Beijing to ease market barriers and currency controls, and says its yuan currency is undervalued, giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage and boosting the U.S. trade deficit.

Beijing raised the yuan's value against the dollar by 2.1 per cent in July 2005 and has let it gradually climb by about 3.8 per cent since then in tightly controlled trading.