Category Archives: China

Wikileaks Disses Chinese GDP Stats

We’ve harrumphed more than occasionally on the dubious quality of Chinese official releases (see discussions on GDP, inflation, and other drive-by-data-shootings for a selection of past grumblings).

So we are delighted to see that Wikileaks is on this beat too. From a March 2007 cable on a discussion between Clark T. Randt and “Fifth Generation Star Li Kequiang”:

China Wants Concessions for Mercantilism in Return for Rare Earths

A story in Reuters signals that China is willing to soften its stance on rare earths. But of course, it has no reason to offer such a concession for free. The article indicates that China wants its trade partners to back off on their pressure on China to curb its abuses of international trade rules. […]

Econoparody: The Dollar and Its Diving

From the folks at Versus. Enjoy!

Auerback: G20 Post-mortem – “Chimerica” has been a Chimera

By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist, hedge fund manager, and Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute who writes at New Deal 2.0. A disastrous trade war may be coming our way. There has been a considerable amount of discussion about current account imbalances in light of last weekend’s failed G20 summit. For the most part, […]

QE2: Bernanke Cuts Geithner Off at the Knees

The Fed’s announcement of $600 billion of intermediate and long Treasury purchase, informally dubbed QE2, teed off a peppy rally in stocks, and led to further weakening of the dollar. These trends were already well in motion thanks to the central bank’s winks and nods that it was going to embark on another round of […]

Is the US Taking Too Much of the Brunt of the Crisis Aftermath?

Before readers throw brickbats at me, I’m just acting as the messenger for two articles, one by Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff, the other by the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf. Each points out that the US is taking a proportionately bigger hit than other big economies post crisis, particularly in terms of unemployment. And this is actually […]

US Faces Substantial Obstacles to Increasing Rare Earths Production

Reader James S. highlighted a useful article at the MIT Technology Review, “Can the U.S. Rare-Earth Industry Rebound?” Our only quibble to this solid piece is its summary, which underplays some critical aspects of the article: The U.S. has plenty of the metals that are critical to many green-energy technologies, but engineering and R&D expertise […]

China Drops Rare Earths Ban

Here’s the update, per the New York Times: The Chinese government on Thursday abruptly ended its unannounced export embargo on crucial rare earth minerals to the United States, Europe and Japan, four industry officials said. The embargo, which has raised trade tensions, ended as it had begun — with no official acknowledgment from Beijing, or […]

Have the US and China Kissed and Made Up?

The recent jousting between the US and China had the look of a full on row. And the spectacle at last weekend’s G20 seemed to offer further confirmation, with Geithner proposing a cap on current account surpluses that was aimed at China above all. But now the Financial Times tells us that relations are already […]

Geithner Pushes for Cap on Current Account Surpluses

In all honesty, the news report out of the G20 strikes me as such a weird idea that I don’t know what to make of it. From the Financial Times: During an all-night meeting in South Korea of finance ministers from the G20 group of countries, the US called on nations to cap current account […]

What does PBOC’s latest rate hike tell us?

By Yiping Huang, Professor of Economics at the China Center for Economic Research, Peking University. Cross-posted from VoxEU. On 19 October, the People’s Bank of China announced a series of rate hikes. This column argues that the moves were aimed at combating domestic inflation and avoiding the mistakes of Japan in the 1980s. On 19 […]

“A currency war the US cannot win”

Yves here. This post cites a number of recent Western commentaries on China’s currency policies; I suggest, for one stop shopping, you read Martin Wolf comment, “Why America is going to win the global currency battle.” There are several points in the argument below that are curious, to say the least. One is the notion […]

Satyajit Das: Weapons of Choice in Trade Wars

By Satyajit Das a risk consultant and the author of the Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives During the European debt crisis, in a matter of days, the dollar strengthened by around 10%. The weakness of the Euro and resultant appreciation of the Renminbi by over 14% reduced […]

Rare Earths Row Continues to Build

Bloomberg reported on a rather peculiar announcement from the Chinese officialdom, which comes off as a rather lame rationalization of its ban on rare earths exports. If you are late to this cause celebre, rare earths confusingly really aren’t rare, but they are found only in fairly low concentrations and are nasty to mine. They […]

Puzzling Out China’s Saber Rattling

One of Winston Churchill’s oft repeated saying was, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Of late, China has become a Russian-level conundrum to the wider world. Developed economies are troubled by Middle Kingdom’s increasingly aggressive economic stance; neighboring countries are rattled […]