"I think that what we have agreed to do is to continue to do whatever we can to promote stability and to support policies within Japan that will restore confidence in the economy, get investment going again and get growth going," US president Bill Clinton said after a summit with Chinese president Jiang Zemin.

Clinton praised China for its efforts to maintain the value of its yuan currency, despite a steep slide in the Japanese yen that Beijing says has started to hurt its export-driven economy. "China has shown great statesmanship and strength in making a strong contribution to the stability, not only of the Chinese people and their economy but the entire region, by maintaining the value of their currency," Clinton said at a news conference.

Many analysts worry thatthe sliding yen could force China, the region's emerging economic superpower, into a devaluation that could set off a new round of financial turmoil in Asia.

Convincing Beijing that maintaining the value of the yuan was in China's own interests was among the key items on the US agenda for the first US-China summit on Chinese soil since 1989.

Clinton brought along treasury secretary Robert Rubin, his chief economic adviser Gene Sperling and a raft of other top officials to help drive home his message. Rubin, who on Saturday joined Clinton on his official state visit programme, on Friday met China's central bank chief, the finance minister and prime minister Zhu Rongji. He said later he had been assured China had no plans to devalue. "There were very clear expressions of intent to maintain the value of their currency," Rubin told reporters.

But concern about Japan's frail economy and worries that the Japanese authorities were not doing enough to solve the country's problems loomed large behind the praiseheaped on China for its being a bulwark of stability in the region.

Both Clinton and Rubin said reforming Japan's debt-burdened financial system and steps to stoke domestic demand growth were crucial if the rest of Asia was to stand a chance of emerging from the economic gloom that has spread through the region. "A lot of this must be done by the Japanese government and the Japanese people. We can be supportive but they have to make the right decisions," Clinton said.

The Japanese yen fell to its lowest level in eight years in recent weeks amid mounting uncertainty over Japan's economic future before the first joint US-Japanese intervention in more than six years temporarily lifted the currency's value last week.

The yen has given back most of its gains since then as markets remain to be convinced that Tokyo has the stamina to see through the kinds of tough reforms needed to dig Japan out of recession. Japan's depressed economy makes it harder for other Asian nations, which desperately need the Japanesemarket to sell their products.

Despite the expected drop in Chinese exports to the rest of Asia, Rubin said on Friday that Chinese leaders had told him they still target an ambitious growth rate of eight per cent this year.

Beijing is aiming to transform its communist-era command economy into what Chinese officials have called a socialist market system, a process that has already resulted in millions of layoffs and major dislocations for many of China's 1.2 billion people. Asia's financial crisis has made it more difficult for Beijing to stick to its targets. But officials -- led by Zhu, the architect of China's economic masterplan -- have said they plan to make up for the expected drop in export growth by carefully stimulating consumer demand in the world's most populous nation.