BEIJING - China will continue to soak up excess liquidity as the country tries to keep full-year inflation down to 4 percent in 2011, said Hu Xiaolian, deputy governor of China's central bank in a speech published on Tuesday.

"The latest price rise is driven by complicated factors at home and abroad. There is no fundamental change in these factors so far," said Hu, adding that there is considerable room to increase the deposit reserve ratio in the future.

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Hu gave the speech on Friday, two days before the central bank increased the ratio to a record high of 20.5 percent for large banks.

Her remarks echoed central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan's comments. On the sidelines of Saturday's Boao Forum for Asia in south China's island province of Hainan, Zhou said there is no absolute ceiling for the banks' reserve requirement levels.

Hu also said that China needs to make exchange rates more flexible as a way to address import inflation.

China's inflation hit a 32-month high of 5.4 percent in March.

Since the beginning of this year, the central bank has hiked its reserve requirement ratio three times as part of the government's anti-inflation efforts, which have also included two interest rate hikes and an array of open market operations.