Beijing needs to take US concerns about the value of the Chinese currency seriously, but bilateral disputes should not impede cooperation on global issues such as climate change and Iran’s nuclear program, the US ambassador to Beijing said yesterday.
Washington and other trading partners are pressing China to ease currency controls that have kept its yuan steady against the dollar for 18 months to help their companies compete amid weak global demand.
A group of US lawmakers wrote to US President Barack Obama this week urging him to press Beijing to loosen controls. The US Treasury has the option of declaring Beijing a currency manipulator in a report due out next month, which could set the stage for a complaint to the WTO and possible sanctions on Chinese goods.
“This is a real concern for people in my country,” Ambassador Jon Huntsman told students at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University, citing high US unemployment that critics say is exacerbated by an undervalued yuan.
“Many see the trading relationship with China as a little bit out of balance, partially because of the currency issue,” he said.
Huntsman said China would be wrong to view the currency issue as merely a US complaint, with the EU and other trading partners — and even the head of the IMF — sharing such concerns.
He indicated US officials would press China hard on allowing the yuan to appreciate in upcoming trade talks, and hoped to see “more flexibility on the exchange rate.”
China denies that its currency is undervalued, although many analysts expect the government will gradually raise the yuan’s value this year while maintaining exchange rate controls.
The sharpening trade disputes come amid lingering Chinese anger over US arms sales to Taiwan and a recent meeting between Obama and Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
Hard-liners in the Chinese military have argued for punishing the US by withholding cooperation on issues such as Iran and climate change.
However, Huntsman said such differences “cannot, must not, prevent the two countries from working together to create jobs, address climate change and prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability.”
“To put our relationship on a more stable and mature footing, we have to delink our differences on bilateral issues from our cooperation on global issues, including nonproliferation,” he said.
China, which relies on Iran for much of its energy needs, has so far refused to agree to new sanctions on Iran to pressure it to suspend its uranium enrichment program.
Huntsman said China has much at stake in the debate over Iran, having imported more oil from Saudi Arabia last year to fuel its booming economy than the US did.
“Tensions in the Middle East have an impact on the price of oil internationally and can adversely affect China’s development strategies,” Huntsman said.
China also needs to work with the US on establishing verifiable targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the next major climate conference in Mexico in late November, he said.
“As the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, we have a responsibility to lead the way,” Huntsman said.
China has resisted setting verifiable targets for emissions reductions and was blamed by some for the failure to reach a binding agreement at last year’s Copenhagen climate change conference.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS