CHINA US Focus - Perspectives shaping the world's most important bilateral relationship

Thanks to the central government’s stabilization policies, Chinese enterprises have accelerated production to make up the inventory rather than slowing down production to digest the inventory. The macroeconomic operation will continue the rising trend and China’s GDP growth in 2013 may be faster than 2012.

While avoiding the label of “currency manipulator,” China’s currency, the renminbi, continues to face criticism by the US Treasury Department for being “significantly undervalued.” Now, an analysis of global trade data seeks to end the correlation between trade surplus and currency exchange rates.

Recently, there has been an increasing call from the global sphere for the Chinese government to faster globalization of the RMB, since stronger economic growth in China can also help pull the rest of the world out of its current financial slump. The next question comes to whether China is ready for the challenge in next five to ten years.

Recently, the U.S.-Chinese Strategic & Economic Dialogue (S&ED) was overshadowed by international politics, rapid escalation of challenges in the Eurozone, and debates on the slowdown in Asia. Nonetheless, the Dialogue was surprisingly productive, in light of the magnitude of challenges facing the global economy and Sino-U.S. bilateral relations today.  Most importantly, it precipitated a major [...]

For too long, the United States has allowed its fixation on the renminbi’s exchange rate to deflect attention from far more important issues in its economic relationship with China. For a growth-starved US, the opportunities for access to China’s markets far outweigh the currency threat.

Despite having existed as an organized institution for several years now, the BRICS nations are still struggling to find a common identity and institutionalized cooperation. The central reason for this lack of cohesion can be attributed to the often conflicting goals of the five nations. Yet the five emerging economies pride themselves on forming the first important non-Western global initiative.