The sagging US dollar and the recent reevaluation of the Chinese Yuan has caused Korean economists to propose the creation of a pan-Asian currency:

“Asian nations have continued raking in U.S. treasuries _ they depend too much on the U.S. export market and no financial markets able to absorb the current account surplus exist,’’ Choi said.

“If this trend continues, Asian nations will face a growing financial risk caused by a sharp fall in dollar values, thus increasing instability in the global financial system,’’ he added.

Yoon stressed that the key to solving this problem is to create a regional currency, the so-called Asian Currency Unit (ACU), seen as a basket of intra-regional currencies, which he says is the approach taken by Europe.

I cannot envision this idea happening in northeast Asia any time soon.  The way China, the two Koreas, Taiwan, and Japan argue and create political crisis’s out of everything from history textbooks, disputed islands, the name of a body of water (Sea of Japan/East Sea), apologies for World War II, Taiwan as a renegade province, and a host of other grievances between everyone involved; how could they ever iron out an agreement to use a single currency?  Who’s face would they put on the currency?  Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, Chang Kaishek, or General Hideki Tojo?  If it was decided to use landmarks that too would cause controversy because Korea would want the disputed Dokto Islands on the currency. 

Yes, I think Asia is a long ways from creating a common currency, but that may not be a bad thing judging by the up and down performance of the European Euro.

(more…)

The Big Yuan points to a profile on China’s central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, noting the increased influence of the People’s Bank of China and how the governor is being groomed for higher office.

Zhou has an engineering degree from Beijing Chemical Engineering Institute and a doctorate in economic engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing, according to the central bank’s Web site. He speaks fluent English and is the first central bank chief with a doctorate degree.
Zhou began advocating step-by-step changes toward a fully convertible yuan as a means to promote economic growth, says Guan, the lawyer. In academic journals in 1995, he wrote that the first move should be to give trading companies and "weak" industries like steel making greater access to foreign exchange, Guan says.
"Many people felt the yuan should be free-floated but disagreed on how it was to be done," Guan says. "Zhou’s voice was a pioneer in the debate back then."

Further illustrating the governor’s rise, Simon points to a Jamestown Foundation brief on China’s bank bailout, which notes that the PBoC - and thereby Zhou - is now running the show.:

With the formation of Huijin, however, the PBOC stands to regain substantial clout in the appointment arena. Huijin itself is directly answerable to the Central Leading Group on Reforming State-Owned Commercial Bank, and the person running the daily affairs of the Leading Group is none other than Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the PBOC. Moreover, most of Huijin’s management comes from the PBOC/SAFE bureaucracy and dares not anger Zhou Xiaochuan. As Huijin becomes a majority shareholder of an increasing number of financial institutions, it can weaken if not deprive altogether the appointment power of rival agencies.

Not everyone is pleased about the PBoC’s increasing influence, as the Jamestown brief author notes on his blog, the National Development & Reform Commission isn’t happy. Logan Wright has more.

Survived Sars also points to a People’s Daily item on China’s potentially slowing export growth.:

Second, export growth is likely to see a remarkable slowdown in the
second half year, which will impose heavy pressure on the economic
growth in the short term. It will be seen in two aspects: first,
industrial growth to be pulled down, leading to falling employment
growth and slowed GDP growth; second, slowed growth of the production
of export goods combined with accelerated release of the output
capacity of products in excessive supply constitute greater pressure of
deflation. These will not impose a big impact on China’s economy in the
long run. Favorably, slowed export growth will force domestic
enterprises to improve the quality of their products for export and
their performance.

Software piracy isn’t really hurting Microsoft in China, Tyler Rooker argues, because it is preventing the emergence of domestic competition.:

…from one point of view, is that by continuing piracy, Microsoft is able to sustain its monopoly in China. There are no Chinese operating systems. There are none even in the works. Why? Because they will be pirated as well. Piracy undercuts Microsoft but it also undercuts would-be Chinese entrepreneurs who could (undoubtably) create a Chinese proprietary operating system that could sell for 200 yuan ($25). That is the threshold price that would keep Chinese entrepreneurs profitable and return their investment costs. But why doesn’t Kingsoft, the Microsoft of China, attempt it? Piracy.
Piracy, in the case of China, does take profit from Microsoft. But I would argue that Microsoft also benefits, and even profits (as the proverb predicts) from piracy. Without piracy, 100 operating systems, like Chairman Mao’s flowers, would bloom. They would undercut and eventually end Microsoft’s monopoly over the operating systems.

At the Globalization Institute blog, a reports that European retailers are being punished by the EU’s protectionism.

The Wall Street Journal today reports that some European retailers are being left stranded without clothes they have paid for thanks to EU quotas on textiles:

In June, countries with large textile industries, led by Italy, pressed for and got a quota to restrain the impact of a huge surge in imports that followed the removal of global trade barriers on textiles in January. However, the quota for trousers and sweaters already was filled by August, leaving some European retailers without clothing they had paid for. Since then, nations in northern Europe with large retailers have protested.

The European Commission has no business interfering with the textiles trade. In a year supposed to be about making poverty history, it seems odd that the EU should protecting Italian and French special interests at the expense of the world’s poor - and at the expense of European consumers, too.

Brad DeLong posts a review of a book on economic change in pre-Communist China (1900-1950).

Finally, the World Bank has joined the growing consensus that the Chinese economy will see a slowdown in 2006 (Bloomberg, Xinhua via CDT). The full report can be accessed here.

Ben Muse notes that 80% of China’s oil has to travel from the Malacca Strait. Noting that the nation would be at risk from a conflict with India or an incident in the Straits would be a problem. This should be an area of mutual concern for the US and China. The former has long been arguing with Malaysia and Indonesia that Straits security is a global concern. Only Singapore has agreed to allow non-littoral states to engage in anti-piracy patrols.

Via BoingBoing, Piracy kills creativity.

In China, even cats know kung fu.

An editor at the China Youth Daily has written an open letter blasting new appraisal regulations that erode editorial freedom. ESWN translates. That an 26-year veteran editor of a Communist Youth League-owned paper should be openly criticising moves to create a more dogmatic paper is impressive. But Ian Lamont at Harvard Extended  notes that the desire for press freedom by Chinese journalists isn’t new.:

Kelly Haggart, on Chinese journalists during and after Tiananmen:
"There is pride among Beijing journalists about those few days of press freedom. For one thing, it showed the potential of Chinese journalists. For the first time they were allowed to act like real reporters and they did no worse at covering the story than their more experienced foreign counterparts. … For almost all city people, no matter what they thought of the students and their hunger strike, that week of relative press freedom brought home to them the importance of more open, more enterprising media. Freedom of the press was no longer a complete abstraction." [page 50]

 

The Eclectic Econoclast points to a site offering Suduko-generating software. Wikipedia notes that the Japanese number puzzle has this year gained global popularity.

If Shappell Corby, the Aussie tourist  sentenced to 20 years in a Balinese prison for drug smuggling, is released on appeal… she could be in the money.:

Men’s magazines will rush to sign-up Schapelle Corby for a raunchy photo shoot if she is freed. And the convicted drug smuggler could earn up to $500,000 for a sexy bikini shoot, according to reports.
FHM magazine has revealed Corby polled strongly in its 100 hottest women vote but editors decided against including the former beauty student, fearing a public backlash.
"At the time she was on trial and potentially could have been executed . . . so it may have been in slightly poor taste," FHM editor John Bastick was quoted as saying in The Courier Mail.

Brand New Malaysian points to the hazards of overplanning photo sessions.:

How corny does that look? At best, it shows the over-enthusiasm of this senior academic to portray, perhaps how attached and devoted he is to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, as to put the book on a pedestal.
At worst, he comes off looking like a brown-nosing hypocrite that set up the placement of the book for the photography session.

Japan isn’t just importing cheap manufactured goods from China, Japundit notes that New Tokyo has imported a beach.

The Marmot doesn’t trust a new poll that finds South Koreans would overwhelmingly side with the North .

The survey by Gallup Korea of 833 individuals born between 1980 and 1989 also found a marked shift in attitude to North Korea and the South’s traditional ally, the U.S. Some 65.9 percent responded they would take North Korea’s side if it was at war with the U.S., while 21.8 percent said South Korea must stand with the U.S. and the rest were undecided.

Singaporean scientists have invented a device that could help solve China’s chronic power shortages. With 1.3 billion people here there is a lot of urine that could power this device.

Taiwan’s first iPod-related crime almost sparks a diplomatic incident.:

A 12-year-old girl tried to threaten her friend to get her iPod back, but accidentally dialed the Swaziland ambassador. The kind ambassador has decided to forgive the twerp who called her up in the middle of the night. Lucky for that girl it was the Swaziland ambassador she accidentally called, and not the ambassador from a certain Central American nation that bitched me out in front of everyone at a Far Eastern Hotel cocktail reception once.

A look at representations of aboriginals in Taiwanese baseball, and the origins of the image on the 500 Taiwan dollar note.

Arms Control Wonk notes that reports of the number of Chinese-government front companies operating in the US are consistently overestimated.

The existence of “3,000 Chinese front companies” is one the most persistent claims about China floating around. The number is often attributed to the FBI, but as far as I can tell that’s wrong too. Or it used to be.

Finally, scientists have determined what an average Korean looks like.

ThaRum has an excellent post on Cambodia’s emerging blogosphere.

James Hamilton at Econobrowser takes a look at the supply-demand imbalance in China’s oil market.:

Chief among the questions here are: (1) how could Chinese oil demand have grown 17% in 2004 despite a 35% increase in the price of crude oil; (2) how could this demand growth suddenly be reduced to a 1.4% growth rate in the first half of 2005 despite real output growth continuing at 9.5%; and (3) what do these trends imply is going to happen to Chinese oil demand over the next year?

In the wake of Baidu’s blistering IPO and Yahoo!’s big deal with Alibaba, The Big Yuan takes a look at China’s new media companies. Meanwhile, Fons notes a potential cultural and legal clash of intellectual property rights, pointing to a nicely titled Forbes article: ‘Alibaba’s Thieves threaten Yahoo.‘ DotCom-bust survivor Imagethief is experiencing Deja Vu:

There is no mistake so colossal, so notorious, that people won’t make it again. In fact, the opposite is probably true. The bigger, the balder, the more idiotic the situation, the more likely it is to be repeated. How else to explain that China is whipping up Internet speculation frenzy version 2.0?
I lived through the first one. I started doing professional Internet work in 1995, joined an e-commerce firm in 1997 (in Singapore) and rode the rise and fall of the bubble. The day the CFO took me through my stock option letter is gouged into my memory. “You’re going to be a millionaire,” he told me, after walking me through the numbers in a meeting in 1999. Richard Li had put US$25 million into our company, and the investment bankers were sniffing around. So I believed I was going to be rich. We all did.
I can say with total authority that, to this day, I am not rich. Nor are any of my ex-colleagues from that company. We went from 220 people to 10 in a heartbeat. I remember; I fired forty of them myself.

Logan Wright says that pressure for China to further revalue will continue, noting that the 2.1% revaluation hasn’t placated DC’s lobbyists.:

A coalition committed to maintaining a strong U.S. industrial base today released data reflecting that China has managed to maintain a flat exchange rate following the People’s Bank of China’s long-awaited July 21 announcement of a change in currency policy. The
change, involving a minuscule 2% appreciation of the yuan and the adoption of a basket of unidentified currencies to determine the yuan’s value, potentially incorporated a flexibility mechanism that could steadily increase the value of the yuan over time to a level that would reflect underlying economic fundamentals.

Thomas Barnett spots the buried lead on China’s revaluation, the end of Bretton Woods II.:

In effect, the emerging markets of Developing Asia had, by and large, replicated the same sort of currency stabilization strategy that America used in its post-WWII resurrection of the West (better to peg than to float).
Most economies there had, by now, moved off strict pegs and allow some level of controlled float. With China joining that dynamic, the synchronization of Asia’s internal economic rule sets with the global economy’s growing rule set will be accelerated.
In many ways, this is a real tipping point in Asia’s progressive integration with globalization’s more mature Functioning Core of the West. In effect, Asia reached the point of diminishing returns with that pegged strategy, meaning it achieved a level of economic development in which more control is to be had through allowing the currency to float than keeping it fixed, presuming the economy has the necessary institutions needed to offset that float dynamic. Done well, your economy will self-correct better, avoiding either overheating or hard landings.

The Times of India has picked up, and hyped, the Business Week series on India and China, with an article titled "India is a better model than China." Gerald Hibbs suggests the article is a touch too optimistic from the Indian perspective.:

Alright, now the guy did qualify this statement as “over time”, that slack being cut let me state that this is pure piffle. At the beginning of the 20th century America had 70% of its workforce working in agriculture by the 21st century that figure had dropped to less than 1%. China is still sowing and reaping by hand (peasants’ hands) and has a huge backlog of people who can’t wait to leave the farm and go to the city to lead the “noble life” as the magazines portray it. Add in that China is just beginning to utilize all the talent of Chinese women who are taking the colleges by storm. Sure, sure. . .over time. But that time is a long way off.

Constructive reading via Howard French, a Foreign Affairs item called “The Myth behind China’s Miracle.”

Washington need not worry about China’s economic boom, much less respond with protectionism. Although China controls more of the world’s exports than ever before, its high-return high-tech industries are dominated by foreign companies. And Chinese firms will not displace them any time soon: Beijing’s one-party politics have bred a timid business culture that prevents domestic firms from developing key technologies and keeps them dependent on the West.

On a related note, Simon points to a letter in this week’s Economist noting that the magazine was guilty of serious hyperbole in saying that China rules the world.:

SIR - You propagate the canard that, economically, China now rules the world ("From T-shirts to T-bonds", July 30th). It does nothing of the kind. In real dollar terms (purchasing-power parity valuations are at best controversial, at worst misleading) China has made a continuously declining contribution to global GDP growth from 10% of the total growth registered in 2001 to an estimated 6% in 2004-its share of real global GDP was an estimated 2.2% for 2004. There is also some quantitative flaw in your argument that cheap Chinese exports kept global inflation down, as China’s share of global trade (an estimate unencumbered by PPP considerations) stood at 6.6% of global exports and 6.2% of global imports in 2004.
It is the speed of the rise of China’s share in global economic and trade flows, as well as the growth of its demand for commodities, that has obscured the fact that China consumes, for example, less than 10% of the global output of oil. So what is truly special about China? Its average position in the scheme of things is still very small, although its absolute speed of growth and its opening economy are a harbinger of growth to come. But all of this is a far cry from controlling the world economy.

Great discussion at the Becker-Posner blog on the risks that Chinese ownership of US companies may bring through  several  posts . Here Gary Becker outlines a possible benefit, Chinese investment on the US may limit - rather than increase - security risks.:

Chinese ownership of American companies may not be sufficiently important "hostages" to discourage a military attack on Taiwan or elsewhere. But the point I tried to make on this issue is that China, not America, bears the economic risk from ownership of American assets, since these assets would be taken over by the US in the event of any military conflict, the way German assets in the US were taken over during world War II.
There is evidence, in studies by Solomon Polochek and others, that trade does reduce the probability of conflict between nations, but many other factors are also relevant. So a few examples are not decisive, whether they go in one direction or another. I believe that even the quantitative studies by Polochek and others are far from decisive, but they are the best we have so far.

With a merger of Anshan Iron & Steel Group Co Ltd and Benxi Iron & Steel Group confirmed, the Business China blog reproduces a Xinhua item in which an industry representative argues the necessity of consolidation for the industry in China.:

Although the prices stabilized to some extent recently, Yang maintained that the industry was still facing a gloomy future, predicting that the small and less competitive manufacturers would be put into a tight corner.
So it is urgent for them to be regrouped with bigger and stronger ones, Yang noted.
In addition, many international iron and steel producers have invested heavily in the country’s industry over the past years.

At Destructonomics, a look at what China’s growing grain shortage may mean for global commodity markets.:

…it’s rather remarkable that China’s been able to feed 20% of the world’s population with 7% of the world’s arable land for as long as they have. However, the dynamic has now changed as China’s production is now lower than consumption. China’s economy is in transition. As a result of this growth, China will simultaneously be growing less grain and consuming more.

It was a positive for free trade that the Bush administration was able to secure approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (Cafta), but it will be a negative for China’s textile producers. The Big Yuan says it’s payback time.:

Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C., said he changed from opposing the free trade deal with six Latin American countries to supporting it because of commitments the administration had made to provide relief to the U.S. textile industry. “Not until the administration said it would work with the industry on the issue of exploding imports from China was I able to support (CAFTA).”
The administration has been handling quotas on a category by category basis since a comprehensive trade deal ended last Jan. 1, but China is currently on pace to export $24 billion of textiles to the U.S. (a 60% increase over 2005).
From the article: Gary Hufbauer, a trade expert at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, said he estimated that a comprehensive agreement limiting a broad array of Chinese clothing imports could raise U.S. clothing prices by $6 billion annually, or about $20 for every American. Consumers have been benefiting from falling clothing prices over the past year, reflecting a big surge in cheaper-priced Chinese products.

Sun Bin argues that China has an advantage over India in that it’s more of a meritocracy (due to the absence of a caste system), and one where women have greater opportunity to work.:

Fair play is the fundamental of capitalism. China is still far from perfect, it is hardly the model for fair play. Singapore is. There are so much more that China needs to do. But China learns about fair play very fast and practices it better than other developing countries. The unfairness in India and those other countries is so enormous that it makes China looks like a saint. Such unfairness is sociological and cultural, rather than political or policy driven.

On a related note, Barbarian Envoy
points to an excellent Business Week series of articles from its newest
edition on China and India and offers summaries of several notable items.

Logan Wright notes that China is getting serious about possible inflation, or is at least talking about it.:

Lin Yifu, director of China Center for Economic Research (CCER)of Beijing University, said that owing to the overproduction in most manufacturing sectors since 1998 and the to-be-overcapacity from over-investment in some sectors in 2003 and 2004, China is expected to see deflation caused by overcapacity in the latter half of 2005.
    Evident deflation is apparent to appear in the fourth quarter this year, said Wang Jian, deputy secretary general for the Economic Research Institute under State Development and Reform Commission, predicting overcapacity to take place likely in 2007.
So deflation in the latter half of 2005, or the latter half of 2007, or never.  One interesting fact is that Chinese economists are now repeating the "overcapacity" mantra more frequently than before; maybe they’re just reading Andy Xie and trying to sound cool for their domestic media, but maybe the problem is more fundamental and structural, and it’s become okay to talk about it publicly, to shift the balance of domestic priorities toward controlling the problem.

At China Era, the last chapter in a six-part essay "The Rise of a New Power":

For all its talk about market magic, China’s overpopulated state sector is a massive job bank compared with western governments, which leaves some of the Beijing’s byzantine ministries woefully inefficient. One Indian software supplier, for instance, tried to sell the Chinese government a program to automate parts of the state-owned railroad industry, which employs 20 million people. The idea flopped. "Greater efficiency creates a social problem," explains an executive for a major American software company. "Yes, 20 million are inefficient, but a more efficient system lops off heads."

Sun Bin offers a fine extended post on the Yuan’s guidance basket and an illuminating item on China’s distorted oil prices:

The gasoline prices are RMB4.14-4.62/liter in a middle tier city like Chongqing on Jul23 (after the RMB revaluation), for RON 90-97 (Research Octane Number, corresponding to Pump Octane Number PON 87-93 in US); Using conversion factors of 1Gallon=3.785L and 1USD=8.11RMB, the gasoline prices translate into USD1.93-2.16/Gallon
According to eia.doe.gov, average price in US is US$2.289/Gallon on July 25th
If we factor in the un-tradable cost in operating a retail gas station, we could say the prices are pretty much the same in these two countries
The lack of competition should mean higher retail price and less efficient operation, which might have annihilate any cost gap in labor and rent costs
This means China, being a country of much less access to oil fields domestically and internationally and one that car travel is not a survival essential as in US, is as generous as US in oil tax/etc. It surely has one of the lowest price for oil for a net importer.

Again, the next time someone mentions that China’s environmental regulations are better than those of the US, remember to mention that China subsides the use of fossil fuels.

And that includes Coal:

Meanwhile the death toll (from mining disasters) continues to rise, while people such as me benefit from cheap power, 2/3 of which comes from coal. I figure my wife and I pay about 1200 yuan a year for electricity in Beijing, or about $150 bucks. And we have a big fridge and TV, air conditioning and a washer/dryer. In Singapore I typically had US$100 monthly bills. Singapore had to import all its energy, and I’d expect prices there to be higher for other reasons as well.

China’s economy in 2005 is not what it was in 2000.:

China always has depended on export-led growth.   It is a core reason why China has been so successful.  China is just trying to hold on to the core of its success in the face of political pressure from Washington DC
China always has saved a lot.  It is cultural - all of East Asia saves a lot.
I hear those arguments a lot.
I think they miss a key point.  Even by Chinese standards, China is now exceptionally dependent on exports.  Exports are now about twice as large a share of China’s GDP as they were in 2000.  And even by Chinese standards, China now saves a lot.  By my calculations, savings are up by more 15% of GDP relative to 2000.

The Big Yuan has further reaction to the aborted CNOOC bid for Unocal, including this noteworthy quote.:

From the article: One executive summed up how some in the oil industry felt about political involvement. Lee Raymond, chief executive for Exxon Mobil, said early in the takeover battle that it would be a big mistake” for Congress to interfere with the Cnooc bid because it might backfire for American companies seeking to do business abroad. “If you start to put inefficiencies in the system, then all of us pay for that,” Raymond said.

Simon has further updates on China’s currency basket, something that David Atig calls another step forward,

Another Avian Flu Blog, H5N1, offers a look at computer modeling of how an epidemic may spread.

Both studies look at Thailand as the example source of an epidemic, in part because the Thai government has been more forthcoming with useful information than China and Vietnam (other locations of known human H5N1 infections), and in part because Thailand remains a hotbed of the virus. The Nature team took a case of a single rural resident of Thailand coming down with a human-transmissible form of H5N1, then calculated the patterns of infection across the nation. The results — visible in this movie (small .mov, larger .ram), with red representing flu cases and green representing locations where the disease has "burned through" the population — are sobering.

H5N1 also links to clips on how the plague could be controlled. Improvements in computer modeling  are fantastic. And even if we don’t face Armageddon, a pandemic option would be a great feature for any new Sid Meier game.

I recommend that the man in this photo get out of China as quickly as possible, he won’t be popular after this is transmitted through the SinoBlogosphere:

While it’s not clear if this is the gentleman in question, ESWN reports an Australian named Paul said, "I cannot believe that I would be on top of the Great Wall; and I can’t believe that I can piss a full load right
here."

Pissing on the only man-made object visible from space the Great Wall isn’t going to win you many Chinese friends, although Xinhua is remiss in labeling a rave an orgy. Still, if Binfeng is right the guy who couldn’t hold it may herald a new wave of Great Wall preservation.

On the China blogosphere, we are being watched. Andrea notes an SCMP item on a lecture given by CCTV’s producer Hu Yong.:

"The mainland’s internet police are keeping a wary eye on messages posted by its 5 million bloggers, although most of them use cyberspace as a channel to express their desire for individualism, according to a leading network expert from the mainland."

Chirol at Coming Anarchy takes a quick look at the threat from the nutty nuke-wielding, shorter-than-average guy with a really bad haircut, noting that Clinton cannot be blamed for the current crisis.:

I take a dim view of those on the right who tend to immediately and anachronistically blame him for problems occuring during the present administration. Though the North Koreans indeed renegged on their agreement, it should firstly not come as a surprise nor as unprecendented. The Soviets broke almost every agreement we had with them but it was still better to have some sort of framework than nothing.

Not a surprise indeed, North Korea has not only reneged on any military agreement, it reneges on every agreement! It is a serial violator of trade agreements, even with friendly states such as the former USSR and China, and is a defaulter on its debt. It’s a nasty rogue state and should be forced to stand in the corner until it collapses.

Speaking of Rogue States, good news for Asia, the continent does not feature a single nation in the top-10 of Foreign Policy’’s Failed States index. Plus only three nations cracked the top-20: Afghanistan at 11, North Korea at 13 and Bangladesh at 17. Burma/Myanmar comes in 23rd,

A twisted tale comes from India Uncut, apparently the Congress Party has a problem with press freedom, although they still try to get press coverage when they organize a mob to attack a publication.

The group that came to the first floor roughed up the watchman, broke open the door and charged in shouting on the top of their voices.
This group broke computer keyboards, yanked out phone wires and one of them had even held up a chair to throw at the publisher’s glass cabin.

And here’s the bit I find most remarkable:

Ironically, other press had also arrived at the Mid Day office with the Congress persons, giving the indication that the ruling party had called the media in advance to flaunt their cowardly act.

From Sepia Mutiny, a study that damns public health care.:

Although doctors love to tell you that they work out of a sense of seva, and that the quality of care has little to do with the fee structure, it simply isn’t true. Surprising as it seems, the researchers find that you’re better off with a less trained private doctor than a better trained public doctor. Why? Because the private doctors try harder.

While not strictly Asia related, IndCoup of Indonesia notes an Egyptian report that states that French Kissing and Doggie Style are inventions of Islam. If this is true, I completely forgive the religion for inventing calculus.

After a lawmaker is reported dead after voting against Japan Post privatization, Joi Ito recounts a disturbing conversation with chairman of broadcaster NHK:

I remember him telling me that half of the officially reported suicides were actually political murders/assassinations and that the corruption went all the way to the top. If I had heard this from anyone other than the chairman of the largest broadcaster, life-long political reporter and behind-the scenes kingmaker, I would have thought it was a stupid conspiracy theory

Rajan says that Malaysians who are upset about the haze should SMS Indonesian president SBY. Jeff Ooi has more on the Air Pollutant Index, which was banned for eight years because it damaged tourism.

The Lost Nomad reports that Mamon is alive and well on the Peninsula.

LG Electronics Inc., South Korea’s second-largest consumer electronics manufacturer, said Monday it has begun selling a new three-door refrigerator encrusted with about 4,900 crystals from Austria’s renowned crystal maker Swarovski.
Only 200 of the refrigerators, which are available in South Korea for 3.99 million won (US$3,934), will be sold, LG said in a statement.

I hate it when this happens. In Singapore, quite possibly the only first-world country that (embarrassingly) isn’t a democracy, the ruling People’s Action Party is again acting like Iran’s Guardian Council. Why? A challenger may emerge in the presidential election:

But not in Singapore though. Like in Ayatollah-ruled Iran, interested candidates must first be prequalified by unelected guardians of the faith (the PAP faith in Singapore’s case). Only safe candidates can be presented to voters.

In the Philippines, Sassy says pork-barrel politics must end.:

There’s this lawyers’ group called Lawyers against Monopoly and Poverty (LAMP) that filed a petition with the Supreme Court to declare as unconstitutional the appropriation of the Priority Development Assistance Fund, otherwise known as pork barrel funds–PhP 65 million for each member of the Lower House and PhP 200 for every senator, annually. The total is PhP 8.23 billion.
Why unconstitutional? Because the job of the Legislature is to legislate. The job of developing the countrysides, including infrastructure projects, properly belongs to the executive branch. The Constitution says that the three branches of government–executive, legislative and judiciary–shall be co-equal but separate. Therefore, if one branch encroaches upon the functions of another, there is a violation of the Constitution. Furthermore, the pork barrel funds “pet projects” of legislators and are a source of corruption.

Indeed, if Gloria is ousted, there should be a Sassy for President campaign.

 

Welcome to the first of what will be a semi-regular feature, a roundup of blogging on China’s economy.

Via China Digital Times, Robert Reich in the American Prospect warns that the US housing bubble is being fueled by Chinese money

Here’s where the China connection comes in. A major reason why mortgage rates have stayed low is that there’s a lot of money around. And much of that money has been coming from abroad. China and the rest of Asia have been putting their spare cash into America, in order to prop up the dollar and make it easier for them to export to us.
But that’s about the change. We’ve been pressuring them to let their currency rise, and they’re getting the message. We don’t know yet how much they’ll let it rise. But the writing’s on the wall, in Chinese characters. And other Asian nations are following China’s lead.
You don’t have to be a zen master to see this means less Asian money flowing into the United States. Which in turn means long-term interest rates — including mortgage rates — will start to rise. It’s just supply and demand: less money around, and the cost of borrowing goes up.

Incidentally, Asiapundit warns that Shanghai’s property bubble is being fueled by speculative inflows.

In the wake of failed takeover bid’s for Unocal and Maytag, Horse’s Mouth anonymous guest blogger Martyn notes that China hasn’t been creating many world beaters even when acquisitions have been successful.:

Fortune 100 list 2004 of China’s top listed companies predicts that fewer than five will become global leaders ten years from now. However, George Baeder of international strategy consultants Monitor Group says, “That’s probably an optimistic view.” I would tend to agree with him.
Chinese companies have also, to date, made some horrific foreign investment decisions and not just related to paying inflated prices for extremely dodgy assets. TCL purchased French multinational Thomson last year, including America’s 86-year-old RCA. “We thought we could sell RCA as a premium brand, but in fact it had already deteriorated into pretty much a low-end brand,” says TCL’s Vincent Yan. TCL had forecast a turnaround at RCA by the second half of this year. That has now been moved back to the first quarter of 2006 and looks extremely optimistic.

The Big Yuan reports that China’s loans from the World Bank are coming under fire.:

The World Bank, whose charter aims to fight poverty in developing nations, continues to lend about $1 billion to China annually, and according to the International Herald Tribune, these loans are increasingly coming under fire. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, feels that while these loans are being used to develop roads and infrastructure the PRC is able to invest more into its own armed services. He says, “We have to be very vigilant.”

But, Talk Talk China muses that corporate China may have some advantages, although these stem from a lack of ethics.:

While the West is mired down in debates over globalisation and corporate social responsibility, conservative governments in the US restrict stem cell research, and EU governments dither over GM food safety, one begins to see a real opportunity opening up for China to take the lead in these areas, perhaps finally finding its own place in the world — and leaving the West behind in the dust, nursing its ethical qualms.

At the Economist’s View, a look at the winners an losers from China’s currency revaluation.:

If employment and manufacturing do increase, there are transitional costs to consider as the article notes.  Rising interest rates will cause less activity in sectors such as housing and more activity in other sectors such as (hopefully) computer chips.  But during the transition unemployment could potentially increase.  Nevertheless, to the extent that such rebalancing is healthy for the economy in the long-run, there is a long-run benefit that follows the short-run cost, but the cost does need to be acknowledged.

While a stronger yuan may cut into China’s manufacturing exports, there’s one export that might see an increase. After all, ill-gotten gains just became two percent more valuable. (Update: the five billion yuan figure was reported in the Standard, Xinhua is reporting the amount is 50 billion dollars) :

4,000 Chinese officials fled China last year with an estimated 5 billion Yuan [HK$4.80 billion-US$600 million] in graft money in tow. The currency figure seems a little low to me since this only amounts to US$150,000 for each of the 4,000 fugitives, not enough to even buy a house in Canada or the US. I figure that this figure is probably substantially understated since a higher number would imply that the problem is nowhere near under control.

Via Survived Sars, a link to an excellent brief from the Jamestown Foundation on the limits of Chinese Economic reform:

There have always been two Chinas: a maritime China, caught up in the economic growth of modern times and looking beyond her frontiers; and a continental China, agrarian, bureaucratic, conservative, and unaware of the economic advantages of international capitalism. It is this second China that consistently controls the political power within Beijing. Economic growth has mainly been concentrated in maritime cities, while the vast hinterland remains very unevenly integrated into a national economy. Given its size and rate of growth, this inequity between reformed and unreformed areas may greatly distort free-market trading systems.

Via ESWN, 11 people are being tried for criminal use of the internet.  But it’s not about politics, it’s about porn.

So what exactly were they doing that constituted criminal behavior? Well, this should have been easy to guess.  As a country, China has the second largest number of Internet users.  When Chinese people get on the Internet, most of them are not banging the keyboard to talk about freedom or democracy.  Similarly, as a country, the United States has the largest number of Internet users and most Americans do not get on the Internet to talk about the privatization of social security or the nomination of John Bolton as US Ambassador to the United Nations.  The common thing about the United States and China is that the most popular subject on the Internet is … pornography.
The name of the web site in this case is "99bbs.com."  It was founded in 2002 by a 19-year-old Fujian resident named Wang Rong.  The web servers for the website are located in the United States, and therefore beyond the reach of Chinese law enforcement.  The web site may have begun as a general interest forum, but in 2003 it began to distribute pornographic movies, pictures and articles.  During this time, Wang Rong recruited the defendants over the Internet to manage various aspects of the operations.

The North Koreans have agreed to return to talks, OneFreeKorea isn’t too optimistic: "North Korea will have to compromise substantially on transparency, something I doubt they’re prepared to do.". Also at 1FK, a reader’s letter indicates that the dictatorship’s film-making propaganda department may soon start to employ focus groups.:

A North Korean propaganda film about the repatriation of a spy Lee In-Mo who had languished for years in a South Korean prison may have a short shelf life, according to defectors now living in the South.
"What we could not believe in the movie was that Lee and others were conducting hunger strikes in the prison," said one defector about the movie.
"Refusing to eat was a form of resistance in the South? Boy, South Korea must be a paradise. That’s what we said among ourselves"

Deng Xiaoping will not be on the 500 yuan note - unfortunately that means, should such a bill come into existence, it will also have Mao’s murderous mug. Also from Danwei, news that China continues to use formaldehyde in beer.

Tokyo and Beijing have agreed to co-operate against the Triad and Yakuza.

After a successful soft launch, the Shanghaiist goes live tomorrow. Given that the venture is headed by Dan Washburn, and features esteemed contributors such as Running Dog and myself, expect nothing less than excellence.

Big media… well Canada’s CTV .. have started to notice Western corporate complicity in China’s internet censorship (though it’s sad that a Canadian broadcaster didn’t bother to mention Nortel (or Alcatel).:

Now, U.S. companies are providing equipment and software that
enables service providers to enter thousands of banned keywords and web
addresses for automatic blocking.
Cisco Systems Inc., which is based in San Jose, Calif., sold the
communist country routers that have the ability to block not only the
main addresses for web sites, but also specific sub-pages, while
leaving the rest of the site accessible.

Japundit continues to debunk myths about the ‘tiny archipelago ‘ although the ‘panty-pulling craze’ is a less attractive myth than two earlier debunked hoaxes.:

Two of the most famous Japan craze hoaxes are the see-through skirt hoax (neither the see-through version nor the printed-on version of this hoax is true) and the scanty bathing suit hoax.

In Malaysia, TV Smith reprints a letter to the editor that really should have been published.:

On April 29 this year, reader Donald Tan copied me a letter he sent to a major newspaper. In it, he stated his worries about a precariously perched flyover. It was being built over a busy expressway he uses daily. He also enclosed a picture (above). The letter was never published by the newspaper nor the subject investigated for reasons unknown…
This afternoon, prophetically enough, the structure collapsed onto the road below, smashed a passing car and injured several workers.

The bishops of the Philippines no longer live under the shadow of Sin (Cardinal Jaime Sin that is) and have decided to remain out of politics. A separation of Church and State in the Philippines would be amazing. Now all that’s needed is a removal of the influence of ex-presidents (While I like Ramos, I  would also extend Torn&Frayed’s list to include the late Marcos).

Who says Singapore is conservative… Cowboy Caleb brings us a look at the phallic souvenirs of the Lion City.

Of course just because Singapore isn’t conservative doesn’t mean it’s entirely liberal.:

Media freedom in Singapore is constrained to such a degree that the vast majority of journalists practice self-censorship rather than risk being charged with defamation or breaking the country’s criminal laws on permissible speech.

Wannabe Lawyer points out why I couldn’t find any decent pinball games in Singapore.

There’s lots of great blogging on the CNOOC bid for Unocal. That’s not suprising given the blogosphere’s unfailing ability to denounce the actions of grandstanding politicians. Yesterday we noted Billmon’s fine screed on the US Congressional vote against the proposed takeover. Today, Beijing PR flack Imagethief today lambasts the typically ham-fisted CPC reaction:

Honestly, there may be a brilliant PR slagfest going on behind the scenes, but publicly the rhetoric on both sides is pure cold war. I really think China, as a state, is PR deficient. They don’t seem to understand how to make public statements that don’t sound utterly provocative:

"We demand that the U.S. Congress correct its mistaken ways of politicizing economic and trade issues and stop interfering in the normal commercial exchanges between enterprises of the two countries," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement released Tuesday.

I can’t find the whole statement on MOFA’s English website; possibly this is an inflammatory translation of a perfectly reasonable written Chinese statement (this was, apparently, a written statement and not from one of MOFA’s regular press conferences). But if it has been reported as written, honestly, it seems dim. If I were writing a statement calculated to harden the position of the US Congress, it would look pretty much like this. And even if it is an inflammatory translation, that’s probably something MOFA ought to take account of in its statements. That is, if it doesn’t want to see US congressmen burning Chinese flags

Glenzo, a HK-based CNOOC shareholder also cringed at the MOFA statement, he much prefers the level argument put forth by CNOOC chairman Fu Chengyu (via WSJ):

The majority of Unocal’s Asian reserves are gas. Its proven reserves are mostly committed to long-term contracts in the region, notably for domestic gas markets in Thailand and Bangladesh. Unocal also has very substantial gas resources–or unbooked reserves–particularly offshore East Kalimantan, Indonesia, which will be developed for the production of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Although CNOOC will have no direct influence over the marketing of the LNG, since this is conducted by Indonesian state-owned entities, it is expected that the clean-burning LNG will be sold primarily into Asian markets.

Brad Setser looks at another WSJ piece on the bid and muses that the proposed deal can be seen as an asset swap:

Consequently, it is fair to say that China financed the purchase of Unocal out of its trade surplus. But it equally could be said — given that China is attracting 60 or 70 billion dollars of FDI a year — that in some broad sense the purchase of Unocal is an asset swap. China gets Unocal, and in particular its Asian gas fields and in exchange US and other firms get manufacturing facilities in China. Rather than using the dollars associated with inward FDI flows to purchaser even more Treasuries and Agencies for China’s reserves, in some sense CNOOC plans to draw on the broad pool of dollars coming into China to purchase a US firm.

At China Matters, an argument that the US left has latched on to the bid as a way to compensate for its otherwise dovish foreign policy.:

Much of the opposition stems from a visceral distaste for the CCP regime and awareness of the human rights horrors it has perpetrated over the last eighty years, culminating in the Tian An Men incident.
But some of it looks like a calculated attempt to stake out some defendable political turf for the left on national security and foreign affairs.
Americans are becoming increasingly aware that the U.S.A. is an empire, with burdens and opportunities well beyond those of ordinary nation-states. And Americans recognize that the right wing has an ideology matching this power—kick-ass unilateralism in the service of U.S. hegemony.
The Democrats and, especially the left, are having a hard time coming up with an electable package that combines traditional—and admirable—concern with human rights and social justice with a strategy that defines and manages American power in a crowd-pleasingly pro-active and hairy-chested way.

Nitin’s 16th weekly blogside view of the Indian economy is up.
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At the Economist’s View, Mark Thoma looks at the increasingly bombastic rhetoric over CNOOC’s bid for Unocal. Piquing his interest is this quote from a Washington Post item:

… the quest for Unocal and other foreign companies is being construed by some as a sign of diversification.  "We invest too much in U.S. federal bonds, and they don’t make us much money," said Pan Rui, a professor at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. "Now we’re learning to invest more wisely, to try to invest in American companies and industries."

Rebecca McKinnion has a long but must-read post, featuring research from Ethan Gutmann, on how Cisco Systems technologies are being used to block the free flow of information in China and to enable the state to monitor its own people without pesky legal restrictions.

Gutmann says:

    The real problem is that the next Tiananmen - in whatever incarnation - is much more likely to fail if Chinese citizens have to fight not only the PLA, but Cisco and Motorola, Microsoft and Intel. And this time, Americans will bear a special responsibility for that failure.
   And I predict that the excuses that we hear from Cisco and Microsoft today (“Microsoft abides by the laws and regulations of each country in which it operates…" - as if the Chinese constitution forbid the word “democracy”) will be remembered as a shameful moment in U.S. corporate history.
    So it’s up to us, activists, journalists, watchdogs, Congress, anyone who’s involved with China, to put pressure on American corporations; shareholder proposals; divestment from university contracts. Make a copy of this brochure and send letters, faxes, emails demanding an explanation. Tell them if the Chinese Communist Party wants to use our technology, it must pay the democracy tax.

Brad Setser offers yet another excellent post on China’s buying spree of US assets, while I have argued that CNOOC’s bid for Unocal’s is a business matter and not a security issue - Setser correctly points out that there is a serious security matter related to the acquisition.

If the US wanted to fund its current account deficit by selling equity, it would need to sell off the equivalent of 40 Unocal’s a year — whether Chinese state firms, European firms, Japanese insurers or Saudi princes. That is a lot. But a $800 billion current account deficit is — as I consistently try to note — really, really enormous (among other things, the 2005 US current account deficit will be about the size of 2005 US goods exports).
Peter Schiff:

In other words, to finance just one year’s purchases of consumer electronics, granite counter-tops, vacations, automobiles, furniture, appliances, clothing, toys, and net interest and dividend payments, Americans will basically give away the equivalent of half of the companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Warren Buffet agrees

Having China bid for U.S. companies such as Unocal “is an inevitable consequence of what we are doing in trade,'’ billionaire investor Warren Buffett said in an interview on CNBC. American purchases of Chinese shoes, furniture and textiles, give the Chinese dollars that they can spend, he said.
“Sometimes, they buy our government bonds, as their central bank has done, but other times they are going to buy our assets. If we are going to consume more than we produce, we have to expect to give away a little bit of the country,'’ Buffett said.

The scale of the debt the US is now taking on — or the scale of assets that the US would have to sell to avoid taking on debt — strikes at least me as a real national security issue, even if you agree with Sebastian Mallaby, and think that the sale of Unocal’s Asian assets is not.

Indeed, and it’s a shame that Congress men aren’t drafting letters on how the Federal budget deficit threatens US security interests.

Simon World offers a great roundup of blog opinion on CNOOC’s bid for Unocal. The top-spot goes to this item from Hemlock.:

From Chevron’s point of view, it’s not fair. But
assuming CNOOC’s bid passes muster with regulatory and legal
authorities, that’s too bad. Chevron has ‘lost’ one potential
opportunity but still has its money and the possibilities it offers.
Unocal’s owners are clear winners, getting a juicy price for their
asset. We CNOOC owners gain an overpriced acquisition at subsidized
financing costs – let’s say it nets out. So does that leave the Chinese
taxpayer as the main possible loser? Or are the sneaky commie hordes
the ultimate winners?

Brad Setser offers a neat dissection of an Asia Times item on the possible effects of a renminbi revaluation.:

This article struck me as confused, even for an article that tries to summarize a range of different views on the RMB.

I just don’t see how a RMB revaluation can both:
1. Have a limited impact on the US bilateral trade deficit with China….
2. Decimate Chinese exports….

The Toronto Star has a reasonably balanced article on the emerging trade war between the U.S. and China, and Canada’s place in averting it.

Call it the new China Syndrome. Canadian Finance Minister Ralph Goodale has been wrestling with it. So has U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. And if something isn’t done about it, some policy makers fear the resulting impact could destabilize the global economy. Their
dilemma is this: Many of China’s trade partners — and especially the
United States — are saying cheap Chinese goods are flowing into North
America, flooding their markets and destroying jobs.

Imagethief sums up US paranoia over Cnooc’s recent bid … just about everything China does.:

Current “yellow peril” scorecard:

• Currency manipulators
• Textile dumpers/WTO flouters
• Growing militarists (from Rumsfeld’s recent address in Singapore, an odd criticism from the United States, which accounts for something like half of planetary defense spending)
• Resource appropriators
• IPR violators (this one is probably deserved, but it adds to the din)
• Potential (not actual) US Treasury bond dumpers
• Etc.

He adds a number of solutions.:

• Stop driving all those Cadillac Escalades and be just a tad more fuel efficient
• Convince Americans to start saving, even just a little, and slow down the debt-financed consumer binge that is powering the trade deficit
• Spend less money on misguided foreign military adventures and ill-conceived weapons and more on the public schools which appear to be failing to train our next generation of technologists

I’m not in agreement with point three, but I will add a fourth point:

• The US, not China, is responsible for the number of treasury bonds it issues. If the country is so concerned about the threat of China dumping treasuries the way to fix this would be to cut back on issuance (ie. stop borrowing and cut spending).

I welcome further additions…

US treasury Secretary John Snow last week said that China should revalue its currency "now." Jing provides us with a translation of Premier Wen’s response.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Sunday China must uphold the principles of independent initiative, controllability and gradual progress in pursuing RMB exchange rate reform.
"By ‘independent initiative,’ we mean to independently determine the modality, content and timing of the reform in accordance with China’s needs for reform and development," said the premier when addressing the opening ceremony of the Sixth ASEM Finance Ministers’ Meeting, held in Tianjin, a port city in North China.

In laymen’s terms, that roughly translates as a sod off to the recent statements by both members of Congress and the Bush administration over the currency issue.

The now banned-in-China Macroblog notes that Europe is more-or-less ok with this.:

.. it is up to China to decide the timing (of exchange rate reform) and we are waiting," [Deputy Finance Minister Caio K. Koch-Weser of Germany] said…
RT Hon Des Browne, chief secretary to the British Treasury, said he was "pleased" by what the Chinese premier said, adding, "We will continue to be supportive of China’s ambition in this regard."
"It is very important and very good that Chinese leaders paid great attention to this matter (currency reform) and I’m sure this matter will develop in time," Rastislav Sulla, counselor/head of the trade and economic department, the Slovakian Embassy to China,told Xinhua.

To defend the Chinese side, it is only reasonable that the country put proper hedging mechanisms in place ahead of any change in its currency regime. To defend the US side, the slow-moving CPC is taking far too long to do this.

If I had a few hundred billion lying around, I’d waste substantial sums and I wouldn’t be too concerned about price. China is sitting on close to $700 billion in foreign exchange reserves, produced because neither imports nor investment outflows have been sufficient to soak up forex inflows. Barron’s in the earlier-noted item, looks how some of those fat stacks of cash are now being used:

Chances of getting a bargain buying an oil company after a rise of over 60% in crude prices over the past year doesn’t strike us as quite as good as the average sucker’s chances of hitting the lottery, whether the buyer is Chevron or Cnooc. Which merely enhances the likelihood that a Chinese acquisition binge in the U.S. will end on the same sobering note for the big Sino spenders as the Japanese buying binge did for the feckless acquisitors from the Land of the Rising Sun. Nowhere is it written that the Chinese have a better eye for value than the Japanese.
We do sympathize with the Chinese. They’re sitting on close to $691 billion in foreign-exchange reserves, not a little of it resting in U.S. Treasuries. Buying something, anything, American with that mountain of money is a heck of lot better than building another steel mill or pouring yuan down a rat hole in an effort to prop up a sinking stock market.

(more…)

Barron’s has a great item looking at the apparent recent rise in overseas accquisition activities by Chinese companies. I’ll post something separate on that later, for now, here’s a paragraph that caught my attention. (via Howard French):

So far, in any case, the Chinese economy appears quite reluctant to cooperate with even the mildest efforts to cool it off. Industrial production was up a sizzling 16.6% in May over the same month last year, fixed investment has been running upwards of 25% ahead of last year, oil demand continues to spurt and China has its very own, swiftly growing and very large real-estate bubble. A tendency to operate at least part of its industrial plant so that social stability tops profits as the bottom line obviously serves to camouflage weaknesses, but only for so long.
Our own feeling is that the regime’s ambivalence and equivocation about stepping on the brakes in earnest make China’s mother-of-all-booms almost a sure thing to became a big, fat bust, possibly some time next year. We won’t even hazard a guess as to the size and severity of the fallout, except it’ll be huge and it’ll be global.

Via the Asia Business Intelligence (ABI) blog, a summary of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s senate testimony on China’s currency.

Greenspan informs U.S. Congress that revaluing the renminbi will not increase manufacturing activity or jobs in the United State.
Listen to the entire testimony to the Senate Panel on U.S.-China Economic Relations. It was a spirited debate, with Greenspan and Snow face to face in the ring. One, and only one, of them at his rhetorical finest.

I agree… and it wasn’t Snow. Video is here:

Greenspan’s testimony starts at around 47 minutes, Snow’s testimony starts from 56 minutes. A copy of Greenspan’s testimony is also available here. Greenspan, sensibly, attacks the tariff that has been proposed in Congress should China not revalue its currency:

The broad tariff on Chinese goods that has recently been proposed, should it be implemented, would significantly lower U.S. imports from China but would comparably raise U.S. imports from other low-cost sources of supply. At only slightly higher prices than prevail at present, U.S. imports of textiles, light manufactures, assembled computers, toys, and similar products would in part shift from China as the final assembler to other emerging-market economies in Asia and, perhaps, in Latin America as well. Few, if any, American jobs would be protected.

Both Greenspan and Snow are worth listening to. The Senators, as ABI notes, have some entertainment value:

Several senators jumped on the pile, as they are wont to do. One performed an execrable impression of Mike Tyson chewing on Holyfield’s ear. (Holyfield won, nonetheless.) Worth your time, if only for entertainment value.

Brian Mathes has an item on Greenspan’s recent remarks on a yuan revaluation and what it would mean for sunset industries in the US.:

Alan Greenspan’s recent remarks to the Economic Club of New York painted a different picture of what would happen following a Yuan revaluation.
He predicted that an exchange-rate change was imminent, which may be shortsighted given the politicized climate surrounding Yuan negotiations. The State-owned China Daily recently reported that “Pressure on Yuan Revaluation Won’t Work,” echoing sentiments felt by senior Chinese officials.  Bloomberg’s latest contribution reports that investment banks predicted a sooner revaluation, ignoring how pride and politics had gotten involved. Economists should be careful not to overestimate the speed of these now-tense Yuan negotiations….