{"id":526501,"date":"2010-04-13T12:33:43","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T16:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.economist.com,21006009"},"modified":"2010-04-13T12:33:43","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T16:33:43","slug":"extreme-sensitivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/526501","title":{"rendered":"Extreme sensitivity"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE New York Times<\/em> has a fascinating story<\/a> up today on the internal debate in China over the decision to revalue the currency against the dollar. It seems that leaders ultimately decided that revaluation was in China’s interest, but an actual decision on a shift has been complicated by political factors\u2014the more of a public issue the currency becomes, the harder it is to change course.<\/p>\n

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The Chinese news media, which have far more freedom to report on economic issues than political ones, have framed the currency issue mainly in terms of protecting Chinese sovereignty. That has prompted a series of assurances by Chinese officials over the past four days that China will not be pushed by foreign pressure into doing anything against its own interests…<\/p>\n

Robert Hormats, the U.S. undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs, said during a visit to China over the weekend that a flurry of public discussion about the renminbi late last week had proved \u201ccounterproductive.\u201d…<\/p>\n

People close to Chinese policy makers say that officials would prefer to do it much sooner, but that it became impossible to act in the days before Mr. Hu\u2019s visit to Washington, as the issue suddenly drew broad public attention.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mr Hu’s visit wasn’t the only recent complicating event:<\/p>\n

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An official close to Chinese currency policy makers said that Mr. Geithner\u2019s visit had also made it harder to handle the issue quietly.<\/p>\n

Several people close to Chinese policy makers said that the matter had been made complicated by an article last week in The New York Times, of which the International Herald Tribune is the global edition. That article stirred news media interest by reporting that Chinese officials were very close to announcing a shift in currency policy and might even act before Mr. Hu\u2019s Washington visit if no glitch emerged.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This sets up an interesting state of affairs in which it is in the American president’s political interest to make pressure on China a big deal, and it’s in the Chinese president’s political interest to make the currency issue vanish. But it is in both countries’ economic interest for the renminbi to rise, and so ideally one of the leaders takes a political risk to reach an accommodation with the other. Barack Obama did this, in announcing a delay in the publication of a report on currency manipulation, but that hasn’t managed to drive the issue from the headlines.<\/p>\n

Still, analysts anticipate<\/a> that some appreciation will occur by the end of the second quarter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE New York Times has a fascinating story up today on the internal debate in China over the decision to revalue the currency against the dollar. It seems that leaders ultimately decided that revaluation was in China’s interest, but an actual decision on a shift has been complicated by political factors\u2014the more of a public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}