US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman said China is letting its currency appreciate because it’s in the country’s “immediate interest,” not just because of pressure from the US and Europe.
“Inflation is on the horizon, they’re trying to transition from the largest export power ever assembled in the history of the world to a consumer-based model, and in order to do that, you’ve got to have a properly valued currency,” Huntsman said in an interview on the Charlie Rose show that aired on Saturday on US public television.
US President Barack Obama is pressing Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) to allow faster currency appreciation to help narrow trade imbalances that threaten to trigger protectionism and imperil the global economic recovery.
Huntsman called the appreciation “painfully slow.”
China, which has held the -yuan’s rise to about 2.5 percent since a dollar peg was removed in June, has said that letting its currency appreciate more quickly could cause social and economic disruption.
Huntsman also said he expects some “ideological rigidity” leading up to leadership changes in China in 2012, after which there probably will be a period of reform.
“If I were looking ahead, I would say the years 2013 to 2015, 2016 are going to be pretty important from a reform standpoint,” he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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