BEIJING/TOKYO (Reuters) – Recriminations over currencies reverberated worldwide on Friday ahead of a speech by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke, whose loose policies are blamed by China and others for destabilizing capital flows.

Beijing kept up the heat on the United States, saying Washington should not make China a scapegoat for its own problems by constantly pressing for a swifter rise in the yuan.
Speaking hours before the U.S. Treasury Department is due to deliver its semi-annual assessment of whether China manipulates its currency, Commerce Ministry spokesman Yao Jian said it was not fair to criticize Beijing's exchange rate policy simply by pointing to China's trade surplus.
""Other countries have no right to comment on what is a reasonable level for a country's trade surplus,"" Yao told a monthly news conference.
Sniping over what exchange rates are appropriate to put the world economy back on course is intensifying ahead of a pair meetings of the Group of 20 leading economies in South Korea.
European Central Bank policymaker Juergen Stark was reported as saying countries must avoid a 'fatal' race to devalue and instead coordinate better to smooth out currency swings.
Both he and his colleague, Jose Manuel Gonzalez-Paramo, said China, which is resisting pressure from the United States and other developed nations to allow its yuan to revalue faster, needed to be more flexible.
G20 Finance ministers meet next week in Gyeongju to prepare for a summit of their leaders in Seoul on November 11-12.
U.S. data on Thursday showed America's trade deficit with China swelled to a record high of $28 billion in August -- grist to the mill of U.S. politicians who say that China keeps the yuan artificially cheap to help its exporters.
Spot yuan ended at its highest closing level against the dollar since its landmark revaluation in July 2005 but U.S. critics say it is still 20 percent or more undervalued.
Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda stressed that countries must work together to strengthen the global currency order. Governments would find it tough to cope with the current environment on their own, he told reporters.
Noda struck a more conciliatory tone than on Wednesday, when he criticized South Korea for intervening repeatedly to curb the won, and China, for dragging its heels in letting the yuan rise.
Yao, the Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman, was in no mood to forgive or forget. Japan has ""no reason, no grounds and is not qualified"" to criticize China's currency policy, he said.
Some South Korean newspapers weighed in too, saying Japan risked sacrificing friendly diplomatic relations with its neighbors to placate its export companies, which are suffering due to the yen's rise to a 15-year high against the dollar.
The dollar hovered near a 10-month low versus a currency basket as the conviction hardened that the Fed will further ease monetary policy next month to try to kick-start the lethargic U.S. economy.