BEIJING  A senior Chinese official said on Thursday that China would not bow to pressure from the United States to revalue its currency, which President Obama says is kept at an artificially low level to give China an unfair advantage in selling its exports.

The official, Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a regular news conference here that “wrongful accusations and pressure will not help solve this issue.”

Mr. Ma was reacting to remarks on trade that Mr. Obama made on Wednesday when he met with Democratic senators in Washington. Mr. Obama stopped short of saying China manipulates its currency, but his words on China’s economic policies were harsh  the United States, he said, had “to make sure our goods are not artificially inflated in price and their goods are not artificially deflated in price; that puts us at a huge competitive disadvantage.”

Economists agree with that assessment. They say that the Chinese currency, the renminbi, is undervalued by 25 to 40 percent compared to the dollar and other currencies. The gap is wider than at any time since July 2005, when the Chinese government, under pressure from the Bush administration, decided to do away with the renminbi’s peg to the dollar and allow the currency to float in a narrow band against the dollar and other currencies.