“It is undervalued. And China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued.” That’s Obama getting tougher than ever on China’s rmb policy, even though his U.S. Treasury Department recently reaffirmed that China is NOT a currency manipulator, protecting it from trade action by Congress. The U.S. wasn’t able to pressure G20 nations into agreeing to numerical targets for trade deficits and surpluses, and Obama’s statement shows he holds China primarily responsible, according to Sewell Chan for the New York Times.
In a stellar week for Chinese courts, a man from who was denied a teaching job for testing positive for HIV lost his discrimination lawsuit, and a journalist whose son was sickened by melamine-tainted milk was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Zhao Lianhai upset the social harmony by speaking to foreign reporters, publicly protesting and organizing other parents through a website, the court said. He has said he is fighting not for compensation but for medical care and research into the condition of the affected children, some of whom are still battling puzzling symptoms.
Chinese toy factories often work with a profit margin of 3 percent, and that makes them extraordinarily sensitive to rmb rises, meaning a weak dollar could send the price of toys up for American consumers this year. From Businessweek.
$85.9 million – that’s how much someone paid for an antique Chinese vase at an auction in suburban London Thursday night. The vase was dug out of someone’s attic, shifted around by the auction house, originally listed at $800,000 and finally sold for 69.5 million plus 20 percent in taxes, setting a record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a Chinese antiquity. Newly wealthy mainlanders have been going to great lengths to restore treasures looted by the West during the centuries before the communist revolution.
Hmm… is this why I have so few Chinese friends? An online survey found that 99.6 percent of respondents think “true friendship is fading,” and many people see friendships as a social resource for business and networking, or don’t have time for friends outside of family and work. On a personal note, I love the line added at the end: “The report didn’t offer an error margin of its survey nor a detailed demographic description of the respondents.” A last-ditch effort by a copy editor to at least acknowledge the concept of sensible reporting of survey results? I can relate.
Beijingology 