Japanese Minister of Finance Taro Aso said yesterday that recent moves by China to allow its currency to depreciate are a concern and could pose problems for Tokyo.
The Japanese share benchmark, the Nikkei 225 index, fell 3 percent to 19,435.83 yesterday, slipping below the psychological benchmark of 20,000 on selling of shares in many different sectors.
“Chinese factors are a big part of this, without a doubt,” Aso told reporters during a regular news briefing yesterday.
Photo: AP
Further devaluation of the Chinese yuan could put Japan in a “tough spot,” the Nikkei newspaper and other local media quoted Aso as saying.
It was unclear what choices Aso was implying Japan might make, but the Japanese yen has fallen by over 60 percent against the US dollar since hitting a peak of ¥75.35 to the US dollar in October 2011. It was trading near ¥123 per US dollar yesterday.
The yen’s depreciation was hastened by massive monetary easing since 2013 by the Bank of Japan, which is buying trillions of yen in assets each month, seeking to spur growth.
The injection of massive amounts of cash into the economy drove the value of the yen lower, while in turn boosting profits of major corporations that earn a large share of their revenue overseas — and pushing share prices higher.
The strategy is the backbone of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s effort to staunch deflation, or falling prices due to weak demand and spur growth by persuading consumers and companies to spend more.
The Chinese currency’s decline against the US dollar has had a limited direct impact on the value of the yen, but uncertainty over future policy and over the impact of China’s economic slowdown is reverberating across global markets.
“It’s not just China. It’s the emerging markets in general,” JPMorgan economist Masamichi Adachi said.
“At the end of the day, it’s all coming from China. Brazil, South Africa; many countries are commodity exporters and the final destination is China,” he said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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