Huawei Fires Back at the U.S.
Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Inc. lashed out Monday at a scathing congressional report, calling allegations that it may be spying on Americans and violating U.S. laws "little more than an...
Glut of Solar Panels Poses a New Threat to China
China’s supply of solar panels has grown faster than soaring global demand, sparking a price war.
Ralls vs. CFIUS: What Are the Implications for Chinese Investment?
First, this was not a political move by the President to position himself as tough on China, as suggested by ...
The Changing Politics of Chinese Trade and Investment
On the same day last week that President Obama was issuing an order blocking a Chinese company from acquiring several Oregon wind farms, the ...
Obama’s Evolution to a Tougher Line on China
President Obama’s patience with ...
In Car Country, Obama Trumpets China Trade Case
In a vivid display of the powers of incumbency, President Obama on Monday filed a broad new trade...
U.S. Files W.T.O. Case Against China Over Cars
The United States on Monday filed a broad trade case against China...
Who Makes China Exports: Local Companies or Foreign?
Another month of disappointing China trade data: on Monday, overall Chinese exports increased just 2.7 per cent in...
Buyers Dry Up in China as Economy Slows
China's soft August trade data could presage further weakness in its key export sector in the months ahead, suggesting that the world's No. 2 economy will continue to slow.
The data released Monday showed that China's external and internal...
Romney’s Young ‘China’ Hand
Mitt Romney’s old China hand is more young than old, more Taiwan than China.
Lanhee Chen, 34, is Romney’s policy wonk and one of Romney’s brains on China policy. The...
China's Greatest Challenge: Not America, But Itself
As China’s international profile continues to rise in tandem with its economic and political significance, one might conclude that the Chinese public is likely to expect Xi Jinping to carry a higher profile on the international stage. As the...
Books
08.29.12
The Silk Road
The Silk Road is as iconic in world history as the Colossus of Rhodes or the Suez Canal. But what was it, exactly? It conjures up a hazy image of a caravan of camels laden with silk on a dusty desert track, reaching from China to Rome. The reality was different—and far more interesting—as revealed in this new history.
China Seeks to Increase Mutual Investments with India
China has called for a move to boost mutual investments with India as a measure to strengthen trade ties and reshape what officials have acknowledged is an increasingly unbalanced and strained business relationship, as trade talks between both...
Interview: Kenneth Lieberthal on Strategic Distrust
The United States and China have a relatively successful relationship, but their distrust of each other's long-term intentions has reached a potentially dangerous level, says Kenneth Lieberthal, an experienced China expert based in Washington....
Lies, Damned Lies, and China's Economic Statistics
China's statisticians get a tough press. After all, it was Europe, not China, whose fudged public finance data helped usher in the latest round of global financial turmoil. The biggest corporate fraud in recent memory isn't China's Sino-Forest,...
Olympic Uniforms, Congressional Fashion Statements, and the WTO
Many bloggers have already written about the posturing of certain of our elected representatives on the issue of China-made clothing for US Olympic athletes, using various permutations of the word “idiot” (e.g., ...
Books
07.26.12
Winner Take All
Commodities permeate virtually every aspect of modern daily living, but for all their importance—their breadth, their depth, their intricacies, and their central role in daily life—few people who are not economists or traders know how commodity markets work. Almost every day, newspaper headlines and media commentators scream warnings of impending doom--shortages of arable land, clashes over water, and political conflict as global demand for fossil fuels outstrips supply. The picture is bleak, but our grasp of the details and the macro shifts in commodities markets remain blurry.
A Slowdown is Good for China and the World
What the rest of the world needs from China is not faster growth but more demand. Rebalancing will provide that, although the trade surplus will probably rise before it begins to decline. This will result in falling prices for hard commodities,...
Deeper Slowdown Suspected in China
Official data due this week are expected to show growth in China slowing to its lowest rate since the global financial crisis. But some economists say they are turning up evidence that the true picture could be even worse.
China's Coming Economic Transformation
China is grappling with an economic downturn, but there is more than the usual amount of disagreement about how fast it's slowing down. The battle is not between the usual bulls and bears. The most interesting split this time is between those who...
5 Signs of the Chinese Economic Apocalypse
The lights are flickering in the world's economic powerhouse. Although China's outlook may still be positive by, say, European standards, the numbers show that the country's storied growth engine has slipped out of gear. Businesses are taking...
A Hard Landing?
After three decades of annual growth averaging 10%, China's bullet-train economy is slowing markedly. Economic problems in Europe and the U.S. are stunting export growth, long the primary driver of China's economic miracle. Growth in industrial...
Is the Chinese Economy Running Out of Steam
John King Fairbank, the father of Chinese studies in America, once described China as a “journalist’s dream and a statistician’s nightmare, with more human drama and fewer verifiable facts per square mile than anywhere else in the world.” These...
U.S. Files Trade Complaint Against China on Cars
The United States filed a trade complaint against China on Thursday for new duties it imposed on American-made cars and trucks. The move came as President Obama kicked off a campaign bus tour through the manufacturing heartland of Pennsylvania...
Books
04.13.12
The End of Cheap China
Many Americans know China for manufacturing cheap products, thanks largely to the country's vast supply of low-cost workers. But China is changing, and the glut of cheap labor that has made everyday low prices possible is drying up as the Chinese people seek not to make iPhones, but to buy them.
Is China Slowing Down?
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
With problems in the manufacturing, housing, and export sectors in China, we will likely see slower gross domestic product growth for the world’s second largest economy in 2012. China’s leadership is changing for the first time in a decade, and...
Books
03.02.12
The Mongols and Global History
An accessible, documents-based introduction to the history of the Mongols. The volume opens with a brief original essay by Morris Rossabi, one of the world's foremost scholars on the Mongols. Rossabi's essay gives a historical and interpretive overview of the Mongols and charts their invasions and subsequent rule over the largest contiguous land empire in world history.
Fostering Greater Chinese Investment in the United States
Council on Foreign Relations
China’s outward investment has substantial room to grow, and the United States has the potential to capture a larger share of it—an outcome that would benefit the U.S. and Chinese economies and strengthen the bilateral economic relationship....
Taiwan and East Asian Regionalism
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
With a population of only 23 million, Taiwan boasts a gross domestic product of $822 billion, which ranks 19th among the world’s economies. It is the fourth largest economy in Asia. Real GDP per capita increased by roughly 130 percent from 1995...
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Meetings in Honolulu: A Preview
Congressional Research Service
The United States will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s (APEC’s) 19th Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Honolulu, HI, on November 12 & 13, 2011. APEC was founded in 1989 to facilitate trade and investment liberalization in the Asia-...
China-U.S. Trade Issues
Congressional Research Service
U.S.-China economic ties have expanded substantially over the past three decades. Total U.S.-China trade rose from $2 billion in 1979 to $457 billion in 2010. Because U.S. imports from China have risen much more rapidly than U.S. exports to China...
Sinica Podcast
09.30.11
The Shanghai Train Accident
from Sinica PodcastAt least 284 people were injured on Tuesday when a train in the Shanghai metro smashed into another which had stalled on the tracks. The accident, which threw Shanghai into disarray, came only two months after another near-disastrous incident on...
Sinica Podcast
09.16.11
North Korea: Open for Business?
from Sinica PodcastAs the guillotine of debt contagion hangs over Europe, financial pressures in Asia have led an unexpected player to make a strategic shift. After months of escalating tensions with South Korea have shuttered its opportunities for expanded trade...
Books
06.30.11
Ghetto at the Center of the World
There is nowhere else in the world quite like Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong’s tourist district. A remarkably motley group of people call the building home: Pakistani phone stall operators, Chinese guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Indonesian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there—even backpacking tourists rent rooms. In short, it is possibly the most globalized spot on the planet.
An American Open Door?
Asia Society
Over the past decade, China’s unprecedented surge of economic dynamism and development has radically altered the global landscape and affected a host of international relationships. One of the most significant trends that will influence how the...
The Role of Trade Costs in Global Production Networks: Evidence from China’s Processing Trade Regime
World Bank
This paper uses data from China's processing trade regime to analyze the role of trade costs on trade within global production networks (GPNs). Under this regime, firms are granted duty exemptions on imported inputs as long as they are used...
Books
12.01.10
Tea Horse Road
One of the longest and most dramatic trade routes of the ancient world, the Tea Horse Road carried a crucial exchange for 13 centuries between China and Tibet. China needed war horses to protect its northern frontier, and Tibet could supply them. When the Tibetans discovered tea in the 7th century, it became a staple of their diet, but its origins are in southwest China, and they had to trade for it.
China’s Steel Industry and Its Impact on the United States: Issues for Congress
Congressional Research Service
China’s steel industry has grown significantly since the mid-1990s. China is now the world’s largest steelmaker and steel consumer. The majority of Chinese steel has been used to meet domestic demand in China. However, as its steel production...
What’s the Difference?—Comparing U.S. and Chinese Trade Data
Congressional Research Service
There is a large and growing difference between the official trade statistics released by the United States and the People’s Republic of China. According to the United States, the 2009 bilateral trade deficit with China was $226.8 billion....
Appreciate This: Chinese Currency Rise Will Have a Negligible Effect on the Trade Deficit
Cato Institute
This report argues that the Obama administration and Congress should consider whether RMB appreciation would even lead to the outcomes they desire—namely, more balanced trade. The evidence does not support their objective. Although the short-term...
The 2009 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Meetings and U.S. Trade Policy in Asia
Congressional Research Service
Congress and the Executive Branch have historically identified the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) as potentially important in the promotion of liberalized international trade and investment in Asia, and possibly the rest of the...
China’s Economic Conditions
Congressional Research Service
Since the initiation of economic reforms and trade liberalization thirty years ago, China has been one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and has emerged as a major economic and trade power. The combination of large trade surpluses, FDI...
The Rise of China’s Auto Industry and Its Impact on the U.S. Motor Vehicle Industry
Congressional Research Service
The automobile industry, a key sector in China’s industrialization and modernization efforts, has been developing rapidly since the 1990s. In recent years, China has become the world’s fastest growing automotive producer. Annual vehicle output...
East Asia’s Foreign Exchange Rate Policies
Congressional Research Service
Financial authorities in East Asia have adopted a variety of foreign exchange rate policies, ranging from Hong Kong’s currency board system which links the Hong Kong dollar to the U.S. dollar, to the “independently floating” exchange rates of...
Asia Pacfic Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the 2008 Meetings in Lima, Peru
Congressional Research Service
Congress and the Executive Branch have historically identified the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) as an important organization to help promote the U.S. goal of liberalizing international trade and investment in Asia, and possibly the...
Sino-Japanese Relations: Issues for U.S. Policy
Congressional Research Service
After a period of diplomatic rancor earlier this decade, Japan and China have demonstrably improved their bilateral relationship. The emerging detente includes breakthrough agreements on territorial disputes, various high-level exchanges, and...
Energy Interests and Alliances: China, America and Africa
EastWest Institute
According to conventional wisdom, the United States and China are locked in a high-stakes competition for energy resources around the world, particularly in Africa. Against the backdrop of highly volatile oil prices, mounting concerns about...
China's Changing Trade Elasticities
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
In recent years, much has been written about the China's rising current account surplus and the importance of its exchange rate policy. At the same time, the increasing integration of China into the global economy has raised questions about how...
The Shifting Structure of China's Trade and Production
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
This paper uses disaggregated trade data to assess how the expansion of China's production capacity and its changing production structure may be affecting its trade linkages with other countries. It finds that China is moving away from...
Is China a Threat to the U.S. Economy?
Congressional Research Service
The rise of China from a poor, stagnant country to a major economic power within a time span of only twenty-eight years is often described by analysts as one of the greatest economic success stories in modern times. From 1979 (when economic...
China’s Trade with the United States and the World
Congressional Research Service
As imports from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have surged in recent years, posing a threat to some U.S. industries and manufacturing employment, Congress has begun to focus on not only access to the Chinese market and intellectual property...
Who’s Manipulating Whom? China’s Currency and the U.S. Economy
Cato Institute
Congress and the Bush administration continue to pressure China to allow its currency to appreciate against the U.S. dollar under threat of trade sanctions. Critics contend “currency manipulation” gives Chinese producers an unfair advantage...
China’s Growing Interest in Latin America
Congressional Research Service
Over the past year, increasing attention has focused on China’s growing interest in Latin America. Most analysts appear to agree that China’s primary interest in the region is to gain greater access to needed resources—such as oil, copper, and...
Exchange Rate and Monetary Policy in China
Cato Institute
China's account surplus has increased sharply as a product of economic growth and manipulation of its undervalued currency. This paper argues that China's account surplus is actually higher than reports indicate. China’s monetary authorities need...
China-U.S. Relations: Current Issues for the 108th Congress
Congressional Research Service
During the George W. Bush Administration, U.S. and People’s Republic of China (PRC) foreign policy calculations have undergone several changes. The Bush Administration assumed office in January 2001 viewing China as a U.S. ”strategic competitor...
China and the World Trade Organization
Congressional Research Service
After many years of difficult negotiations, China, on December 11, 2001, become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the international agency that administers multilateral trade rules. Under the terms of its WTO membership, China...
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Free Trade, and the 2003 Summit in Bangkok, Thailand
Congressional Research Service
On October 20-21, 2003, the Eleventh APEC Leader’s Meeting is to be held in Bangkok, Thailand. The theme for APEC 2003 is “A World of Differences: Partnership for the Future,” which is intended to bring together the best potential of all APEC...
China-U.S. Relations
Congressional Research Service
In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States, U.S. and PRC foreign policy calculations appear to be changing. The Administration of George W. Bush assumed office in January 2001 viewing China as a U.S. “...
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), FreeTrade, and the 2002 Summit in Mexico
Congressional Research Service
On October 26-27, 2002, the Tenth APEC Leaders’ Meeting (summit) is to be hosted by Mexico in Las Cabos, Mexico. APEC 2002 is intended to send a clear message to the world that APEC has the ability to implement its initiatives while responding...