Are the Chinese Nervous too? President Delays Retirement of Prominent Banker

Twalbert

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Jul 19, 2011
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Perhaps a testament to the uncertain global economic headwinds that are currently prevailing, Chinese President Hu Jintao has delayed the retirement of China Development Bank's (CDB) chairman, sources said Friday.

According to two people familiar with the situation, CDB chair Chen Yuan, who is currently 66 years old, will stay on as the bank's chairman until his five-year term ends in 2013. This goes against China's typical system, which requires a retirement age of 65 for cabinet ministers.

A Reuters report notes that the news "Suggest that Beijing wants to keep a steady hand at the helm of the country's most powerful policy bank at a time of rising economic risks and global market volatility."

Further adding fuel to the fire is the Chinese population's increasing distrust of their government's foreign reserve holdings. Especially with S&P's recent downgrade of U.S. government debt, it's likely that Chinese leaders want to keep the current chair to ensure stability and credibility.

The China Development Bank provides loans to the country's enormous infrastructure projects in addition to offering financial aid for China's largest companies to expand. Ensuring calm waters at the CDB could make it easier for the government to manage local government debts.

The report also notes that politics played a role in the decision, with one source telling Reuters that "Hu Jintao kept on Chen Yuan to show goodwill to 'princelings'.


Source: Benzinga
 
Senate to deal with yuan practices...
:cool:
US Senate to Consider Bill Targeting Chinese Currency Practices
October 02, 2011 - America’s extensive yet friction-laden economic relationship with China will be the focus of debate in the U.S. Senate this week, as it considers a bill to penalize Beijing for allegedly manipulating China’s currency, the yuan, to benefit domestic exports and disadvantage foreign imports.
China's export strategy

U.S. officials have long complained that China intentionally maintains an undervalued yuan as part of an aggressive - some might say predatory - export promotion strategy. “China’s exchange rate policy is unfair, and hurts the interests of American producers,” said Timothy Geithner, U.S. Treasury Secretary. A bill garnering bipartisan support in the Senate would treat currency manipulation as a foreign subsidy, triggering U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.

'Illegal' measures

“China illegally subsidizes their industries," said Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who is a sponsor of the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act. "They underpay their workers. They skirt environmental regulations, and ignore the tenets of global trade rule after trade rule after trade rule. They get away with economic murder.” Schumer says China’s currency practices have cost the United States more than two million jobs over the last decade. Also backing the bill is Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who says it is time for the United States to defend its interests. “During these tough economic times, we ought not to allow any of our trading partners to rig the game in their favor," he said. "It is the job of American officials to defend the just and fundamental interests of the American workforce.”

Trade worries

Some U.S. industries squeezed by Chinese competition have welcomed the bill. But 50 trade groups representing many of America’s most vibrant export industries have written a letter to Senate leaders arguing the legislation would invite Chinese retaliation and should be rejected. Trade expert Dan Ikenson of the Washington-based Cato Institute agrees. “If we do something unilateral, we risk U.S. export sales to China and the jobs that go with it,” said Ikenson. He says the World Trade Organization would likely reject an American bid to treat currency manipulation as a subsidy. Beyond that, Ikenson says, the bill before the Senate demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of trade in an inter-dependent, globalized economy.

“It used to be the case that it was our producers against their producers," he added. "But now we have globalization, and there is a lot of value-added from different countries in products that we import from China, that are snapped together [assembled] in China, for example. So currency values cut in many different ways.” Ikenson warns against sabotaging a vast and increasingly-lucrative export market for the United States, something highlighted by U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner while testifying on Capitol Hill last year. “China is now consuming more and importing more from the United States," he said. "As a result, China’s overall trade surplus has fallen sharply, by roughly half as a share of its economy. U.S. exports to China have rebounded much more rapidly than overall U.S. exports to the world.”

Chinese currency
 
Of course China is nervous.

Despite the fact that China did an enormous Stimulus and by doing so get its economy back on track, China trade partners in Europe and America are still in financial trouble.

It's an internation world of trade and if your trade partners are in trouble, then you are too.
 
Senate to deal with yuan practices...
:cool:
US Senate to Consider Bill Targeting Chinese Currency Practices
October 02, 2011 - America’s extensive yet friction-laden economic relationship with China will be the focus of debate in the U.S. Senate this week, as it considers a bill to penalize Beijing for allegedly manipulating China’s currency, the yuan, to benefit domestic exports and disadvantage foreign imports.
China's export strategy

U.S. officials have long complained that China intentionally maintains an undervalued yuan as part of an aggressive - some might say predatory - export promotion strategy. “China’s exchange rate policy is unfair, and hurts the interests of American producers,” said Timothy Geithner, U.S. Treasury Secretary. A bill garnering bipartisan support in the Senate would treat currency manipulation as a foreign subsidy, triggering U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.

'Illegal' measures

“China illegally subsidizes their industries," said Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who is a sponsor of the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act. "They underpay their workers. They skirt environmental regulations, and ignore the tenets of global trade rule after trade rule after trade rule. They get away with economic murder.” Schumer says China’s currency practices have cost the United States more than two million jobs over the last decade. Also backing the bill is Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who says it is time for the United States to defend its interests. “During these tough economic times, we ought not to allow any of our trading partners to rig the game in their favor," he said. "It is the job of American officials to defend the just and fundamental interests of the American workforce.”

Trade worries

Some U.S. industries squeezed by Chinese competition have welcomed the bill. But 50 trade groups representing many of America’s most vibrant export industries have written a letter to Senate leaders arguing the legislation would invite Chinese retaliation and should be rejected. Trade expert Dan Ikenson of the Washington-based Cato Institute agrees. “If we do something unilateral, we risk U.S. export sales to China and the jobs that go with it,” said Ikenson. He says the World Trade Organization would likely reject an American bid to treat currency manipulation as a subsidy. Beyond that, Ikenson says, the bill before the Senate demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of trade in an inter-dependent, globalized economy.

“It used to be the case that it was our producers against their producers," he added. "But now we have globalization, and there is a lot of value-added from different countries in products that we import from China, that are snapped together [assembled] in China, for example. So currency values cut in many different ways.” Ikenson warns against sabotaging a vast and increasingly-lucrative export market for the United States, something highlighted by U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner while testifying on Capitol Hill last year. “China is now consuming more and importing more from the United States," he said. "As a result, China’s overall trade surplus has fallen sharply, by roughly half as a share of its economy. U.S. exports to China have rebounded much more rapidly than overall U.S. exports to the world.”

Chinese currency

About time. :clap2:
 
Of course China is nervous.

Despite the fact that China did an enormous Stimulus and by doing so get its economy back on track, China trade partners in Europe and America are still in financial trouble.

It's an internation world of trade and if your trade partners are in trouble, then you are too.

They don't see it that way.. :eek:
 
Of course China is nervous.

Despite the fact that China did an enormous Stimulus and by doing so get its economy back on track, China trade partners in Europe and America are still in financial trouble.

It's an internation world of trade and if your trade partners are in trouble, then you are too.

They don't see it that way.. :eek:

They don't?

How do you know that?

Do you believe that China's economy will keep humming along if their trade partners economies are going down?

More importantly, do you believe that the Chinese leadership believes that?
 
Of course China is nervous.

Despite the fact that China did an enormous Stimulus and by doing so get its economy back on track, China trade partners in Europe and America are still in financial trouble.

It's an internation world of trade and if your trade partners are in trouble, then you are too.

They don't see it that way.. :eek:

They don't?

How do you know that?

Do you believe that China's economy will keep humming along if their trade partners economies are going down?

More importantly, do you believe that the Chinese leadership believes that?

Mainly because I was there last year for the EXPO.

The Chinese are rapidly building up their cities at a breakneck pace.

They aren't all that concerned with "Trading Partners" right at the moment.
 
possum thinks mebbe dey want their MTV...
:eusa_eh:
The rise of an economic superpower: What does China want?
November 5, 2011 - As an economic superpower, what does China want on the global stage?
It had been billed as a friendly exhibition game in basketball-crazy Beijing, between the Georgetown University Hoyas from Washington, D.C., and the Chinese Army's Bayi Rockets. But after some blatantly biased Chinese refereeing and unashamedly aggressive play by Bayi, it ended in a bench-clearing brawl, with Chinese fans in the Olympic stadium throwing chairs and bottles of water at the Americans. Some foreigners in the crowd that hot night in August were tempted to see the melee as nothing less than a metaphor for China's role in the world today: contempt for the rules and fair play, crowned by a resort to brute strength in pursuit of narrow self-interest.

You certainly don't have to look far for examples of China doing things its own blunt way no matter how much Western sensibilities are offended. Just in recent months, Chinese state firms were caught negotiating arms deals with Col. Muammar Qaddafi's besieged regime in defiance of a United Nations embargo, Beijing leaned heavily on South Africa not to give the Dalai Lama the visa he needed to attend Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday party, and Chinese diplomats vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the deaths of nearly 3,000 civilians at the hands of Syrian troops. And that's not to mention the Chinese government's habit at home of locking up lawyers, human rights activists, artists, even Nobel Peace Prize laureates for speaking their minds in ways that would be quite normal in most of the world.

China's economic rise and its newly amplified voice on the international stage unnerve people and governments across the globe, despite Beijing's best efforts to assuage their fears. Bookstore shelves in America and Europe offer titles such as "Death by China" and "When China Rules the World." Edward Friedman, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, echoes some other observers when he goes so far as to call China's rise "the greatest challenge to freedom in the world since World War I" aimed at "making the world safe for authoritarianism." But does China really want to overturn the US-led post-World War II international order – the very system that has allowed the country to flourish so remarkably? And if the men at the top of the Chinese Communist Party are indeed so minded, could they, or those who come after them, ever succeed?

KUNG FU PANDA AND INNER PEACE

Ordinary Chinese – from unschooled peasant farmers tending rural rice paddies to get-ahead young computer engineers in Beijing – have been brought up to see their country as benign, and genuinely don't understand how foreigners can see China as a threat. China is the most populous country and the second-biggest economy in the world, they know, but they point out that the average person here makes only 1/10th of what the average American makes. And most of the country is decidedly third-world. China is modernizing its military but still finds it a strain to keep a destroyer, a frigate, and a supply ship on international antipirate duty in the Gulf of Aden. Compared with the ability of the United States to fight two major wars and keep six full-scale fleets afloat at the same time, China's military power – even with the world's largest standing army – is puny.

MORE
 
About time. :clap2:

Trying to publicly pressure China into doing anything is the worst way to get China to change its actions. Especially with the upcoming transition of power. Saving face is the most important thing.

Some facts to consider.
China's currency has been appreciating. That is, until Congress brought up this legislation; then it took a dive.
The trade gap with China has only increased as the currency has appreciated.
U.S. exports to China have increased the most of any large economies by percentage over the last decade.

Why start a trade war?
 
World recession may cause trouble in China...
:eusa_shifty:
China fears global crisis may ignite fire at home
Dec 6, 2011, China's internal security chief fears that the global economic slowdown will hit the Chinese economy and result in widespread unrest in the country.
Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Communist Party of China's nine-member politburo standing committee and one of the top security officials here, also said that the government is not prepared to handle social unrest on a large scale.

"The party and the government have always paid a lot of attention to social management. But it still can't keep up with the changes in economic and social development," Zhe told party officials.

The party usually describes public unrest as social issues instead of giving them political colour. "Faced with the negative impact of market economy, we still have not established social management system ," he told the official New China News Agency.

Worrying about the growing disparity in incomes , Zhe said, "It can cause great harm to society's ethics and trust." This is first time a top party functionary has vented tensions within the party and the government over slowdown.

Source
 
The Global Crisis Reaches China...
:eusa_shifty:
Unrest Spreads as Growth Stalls
12/08/2011 - China's leaders are currently contending with declining demand, rising debt and a real estate bubble. Some factories are laying off workers, suffering financial losses or even closing as orders from crisis-plagued Europe dry up. The economic strains are frustrating workers and consumers in the country, threatening the political establishment and Beijing's economic miracle.
A police special forces unit appears suddenly. One moment, a worker named Liu* is marching back and forth in front of city hall in Dongguan, China, with about 300 colleagues from the bankrupt factory Bill Electronic. "Give us back the money from our blood and sweat!" they chant. The next moment, their shouts turn to screams as a few hundred uniformed police with helmets, shields and batons, along with numerous plainclothes security forces, leap out of olive green police vans. The demonstration leaders, including Liu, are rounded up on the side of the street by police dogs. Within just a few minutes' time, the communist authorities have successfully suffocated the protest.

The men and women, most of them young adults, are packed into yellow buses and hauled back to their factory, where the government exerts massive pressure: By afternoon, they must consent to make do with 60 percent of the wages they are owed by the employment office. Anyone who refuses, officials warn, will receive nothing at all. The new global crisis has reached China. Debt problems in Europe, the country's most important trading partner, are starting to dim prospects here in the nation that has effectively become the world's factory, as well. The unstable United States economy and threat of a trade war between the two superpowers make the situation even more uncertain. As the US presidential election campaign starts too heat up, American politicians are vying to outdo one another in protectionist declarations directed toward their communist rival.

This October was the third straight month Chinese exports decreased. Along with it, the hopes of German manufacturers that Asia's growth market might help lift them out of the global crisis as it did in 2008 are also evaporating. This time China faces enormous challenges of its own -- a real estate market bubble and local government debt -- that could even pose a risk to the global economy.

Disillusioned Workers
 
Villagers kidnapped and held for ransom by gov't officials...
:eek:
Wukan siege: Chinese officials 'hold village to ransom'
14 Dec 2011 - Chinese officials have ratcheted up pressure on the rebel village of Wukan, as it entered its fourth day of a police siege, by allegedly ransoming four men who were seized from the village last week.
Villagers claim that a representative of the local government offered to release the men, as well as the body of another villager who died in custody, but only if Wukan ended a protest that has driven out all of the village’s party officials and police. The government sent an uncle of one of the prisoners, 21-year-old Zhang Jiancheng, to plead for the village to accept the deal. “He came this morning and said that if we tear down our barricades, remove our banners and return to normal life, the government would not make any more arrests, would release its prisoners and release Xue Jinbo’s body,” said Yang Semao, one of the village’s representatives.

However, Mr Yang said the village had turned down the offer, and vowed to fight on, despite only having enough food left for ten more days of the siege. He added that another government employee, a family friend of his mother, had called on her to warn that her son would be shot on sight and the villagers sent to labour camps. “All they can do at the moment is make threats, but anyone can see they are not credible,” he said. Wukan has been encircled by a police cordon since Sunday, after an attempt by 1,000 armed officers failed to retake the town. No food or water is allowed in, and no villagers are allowed out.

Until recently, Wukan was officially a model village, a bright spot in the county of Shanwei, which is notorious in southern China for its lawlessness. However, the villagers said Wukan, and its neighbouring town, had always been fierce. “We have an old saying here,” said Chen Liangshu, one of the villagers. “In heaven there is the Thunder God, on earth there is Lufeng and Wukan.” Trouble in Wukan has been brewing since September, after the village revolted at an attempt to take one of its last parcels of farmland and give it to a major Chinese property developer, Country Garden.

However it was the death of 43-year-old Xue Jinbo, one of the village’s 13 temporary representatives, in police custody that pushed Wukan into its current fury, and saw the last of the village’s dozen Communist party officials flee. His family believe he was murdered. While the villagers are desperate to reclaim the hostages, and Mr Xue’s body, they said they were adamant that the local government should admit its mistakes and return their land. “We want them to admit responsibility for the bloodshed when the riot police beat us in September, admit that we have a legal complaint, admit that the village representatives are a legal negotiating team, and to return all of our land to us, for us to split evenly among the villagers,” said Mr Yang.

MORE
 
How can ya keep `em down onna farm when dey seen gay Beijing?...
:eusa_shifty:
China's Leaders Increasingly Challenged by Social Unrest
December 16, 2011 - Over the past year, China’s leadership has faced growing eruptions of public discontent over issues ranging from environmental and transportation safety concerns, to labor disputes and local corruption.
Consider the scene in the southeastern fishing village of Wukan, where hundreds of residents, young and old, raise their fists and voices calling for justice and chanting slogans such as the “Blood debt must be paid” and “Return our farm land.” For months, Wukan residents have been protesting, denouncing local officials they say are corrupt and demanding the return of farm land they say was illegally seized for development. The protests peaked in December when one of the town’s representatives, Xue Jinpo, died in police custody. Residents took control of Wukan, forcing Communist Party officials to flee and police to cordon off the village. Chinese authorities say Xue died of heart failure, but residents suspect foul play.

Such land grab protests, as they are called, are increasingly common in China. But the situation in Wukan highlights just how far some are willing to go. Hu Xingdou, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, says that if authorities do not take steps to address the public’s discontent, the unrest could get worse. "One aspect that makes this a matter of high priority for the central government is that China has entered into a very risky period, not just one of an average risk level," said Hu. "I'm afraid that if the central government doesn't put some measures in place in the next five years or so, the whole of China could go out of control."

Simmering issues

And it’s not just land disputes Chinese citizens are protesting. In October, protestors in the central city of Zhili, in Zhejiang province, flipped over cars, smashed public property and clashed with police during a dispute over taxes. Scenes of the standoff caught on video showed hundreds out in the streets, and later scores of baton and shield-wielding police chasing off protesters. Chinese economist Luo Xiaopeng says President Hu Jintao has done very little over the past 10 years to control local authorities, and that China now faces a crisis of governance. He believes this will top the agenda of Vice President Xi Jinping when he takes over for Mr. Hu next year.

“All of these environmental issues, education issues, public servant issues, have been accumulating for more than a decade, so it’s not just now," said Luo. "But I think that everybody realizes the crisis is coming, and the new leadership has to deal with it.” Fears of an economic slowdown next year are also a big concern, says Bonnie Glaser, a China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The Chinese leadership is, I think, very insecure at home, very worried about the domestic situation, the slowdown of the economy, and signs of growing unrest and uneasiness and this could get worse as the economic situation deteriorates," Glaser said.

A restless middle class
 

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