The resignation of People's Bank of China (PBOC) vice governor Wu Xiaoling Thursday is a strong sign that China is likely to continue to be unrepentant in the face of ongoing calls to speed up exchange-rate reform and drive up the value of the yuan.

The central bank said Wu’s resignation was due only to her age, but coming in the same week that Ma Delun replaced another PBOC vice governor, Xiang Junbo, it is not impossible to believe the move has more significant causes. Wu, who was nominated by Forbes magazine as one of the world's most influential females in 2006 and 2007, was known as a strong advocate of exchange rate reform.

Ma, who at 59 is only two years younger than Wu, is not. He is a staunch critic of those who criticise China’s handling of its currency, signalling that Beijing intends to continue aggressively defending its position on the issue.

In January 2006, Ma responded in decidedly undiplomatic terms via Bloomberg to accusations China kept its currency artificially weak to spur imports. He argued at the time that the currency was set by the market. ''We're not manipulating the yuan,'' he said. ''The U.S. trade deficit is not caused by the yuan. It's easy to explain this to an economist, but those who don't know about finance don't understand this. They should go back to university.''

He also made it clear who he was referring to as ignorant on finance. When asked for his forecast on the yuan’s value for 2006 he referred all questions to the market: ''You need to ask the market.... Some people may think the yuan should appreciate rapidly, but, in fact, it may not. It's important to let US politicians understand the currency and what the currency's mechanism is.''

It’s clear that the market is not left completely on its own to decide the value of the yuan, as Ma belligerently insisted, but Ma is correct to assert it has little bearing on the trade imbalance.

As most people worth listening to on the issue agree, the US-China bilateral trade imbalance is due to structural imbalances in the economies of both countries. As such it would likely be relatively unresponsive to any changes in the value of the yuan. In fact, as the yuan has appreciated this year (or rather the greenback fallen) the US’ trade deficit has continued to spiral out of control at an even faster pace.

We are likely to face more blind assurances from Ma that the market is in control of the exchange rate, despite the evidence to the contrary, but at least we can be confident he otherwise has a sound and rational understanding of global finance. And while his assurances may be blind, we can at least be confident they won’t be bland.