NANJING: China's Premier Wen Jiabao kicked off a meeting with top EU finance officials Sunday in talks expected to focus on long-running rancour over the yuan currency's exchange rate.

Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker, European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet and EU economic and monetary affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia were expected to renew calls for China to revalue the yuan during the talks.

Talks between high-ranking Chinese and European finance heads are taking place amid European fears that the euro's rise against the yuan will hurt EU exports to China and eventually slow the continent's economic recovery.

But Beijing, which faces complaints from both the United States and Europe that it is manipulating its currency to gain an unfair trade edge, says it wants to take its time and reform its exchange rate system.

Meanwhile, Juncker has said at the economic meeting, that the global economic recovery was not yet strong enough to withdraw stimulus measures introduced by various governments.

"We are considering the moment has not yet arrived to withdraw the stimulus packages that are under way in various parts of the world," Juncker told a news conference after a meeting between EU officials and China's Premier Wen Jiabao

Wen is expected to urge the European leaders to guard against protectionism amid the global financial crisis. In 2009, the European Union launched five anti-dumping investigations into Chinese products.

The talks come a day ahead of a China-EU summit during which Wen will meet European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who holds the rotating EU presidency.

The summit takes place a week before climate change talks open in Copenhagen, and global warming is expected to dominate Monday's discussions between the Chinese and EU officials.

The official Xinhua news agency said EU leaders were gathering in Nanjing Sunday ahead of the summit. Barroso had already landed and Reinfeldt was due in the city later in the day.

China meanwhile is expected to offer reassuring words on the importance of the EU after US President Barack Obama's recent visit here fuelled talk of a "G2" world dominated by Washington and Beijing.

One senior European official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Nanjing meetings marked the first "substantial summit we have had since 2007".

China cancelled a December 2008 summit in protest at a meeting between the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who held the EU presidency at the time.

A summit between the two sides was subsequently held in Prague in May this year.