China's yuan touched a 19-year high and forward contracts advanced for a third day, after a report forecast that exports from Asia's largest economy picked up last month.

Overseas sales rose 5 percent from a year earlier, after increasing 2.9 percent in November, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey before data due on Thursday.

Growth will probably exceed 8 percent this year, compared with a 7.5 percent expansion target for 2012, and new yuan lending of more than 9 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) will be "enough to support" that, Chen Yulu, president of Renmin University of China and an adviser to the central bank, said on Tuesday.

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Yuan goes global