Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501050801-1086198,00.htmlMonday, Jul. 25, 2005
"Over the past year, wild speculation and furious debate have turned the future of the Chinese currency, the yuan, into the hottest and most polarizing topic in the global economy. Pegged to the U.S. dollar since 1994?meaning that when the value of the greenback rose or fell, so did the yuan's?China's currency had come to embody the industrialized world's fears of a hypercompetitive mainland staging a hostile takeover of global manufacturing. Led by the U.S., critics accused China of clinging to the dollar peg in order to keep the yuan artificially weak, making its exports extra cheap and fostering a worrisome trade gap with the U.S. that ballooned to a record $162 billion in 2004. Unless Beijing changed its currency policy, a trade war loomed. Still, Beijing wouldn't budge, leaving businessmen and investors across the globe guessing as to when this uneasy status quo might finally change?and how dramatically.
Although considerably more muted than expected, the answer came on July 21, when the People's Bank of China posted a notice on its website announcing the end of the yuan's peg to the dollar. Citing its wish to "improve the socialist market economic system in China," the bank set the yuan at 8.11 to the dollar?a 2.1% increase in its value?and decreed that henceforth it would trade within a narrow band of 0.3% each day against a basket of (unnamed) currencies. Now that the yuan is allowed to float, even only slightly, its value should better reflect China's buoyant economic growth and its booming trade with the rest of the world"
Any thoughts?