China’s currency: China, an appreciation

Oct 16th 2011, 19:54 by R.A. | WASHINGTON | The Economist

WITH a China currency bill making its way through Congress, the debate over whether America ought to get tough with China is firing up yet again. The case for an aggressive American approach continues to look very weak to me. Some writers are taking on the idea that Chinese inflation is having much of an effect on its export competitiveness—that is, contributing to a real adjustment much larger than what’s observed in the nominal exchange rate. Kash Mansori makes an argument to that effect in this post, which has gotten a lot of attention. He compares CPI data in America and China and figures that Chinese prices have risen just 6.7% more than American prices since 2005—less of a contribution to adjustment, in other words, than one might have assumed.

That estimate seems unrealistically low to me. Looking at IMF figures on consumer prices and GDP deflators, the differential in inflation between 2005 and 2011 has been about 7 percentage points according to the former and 20 percentage points by the latter. The Economist put together an analysis of the real yuan-dollar rate and found that real appreciation has been significantly greater than nominal appreciation. . . .

China’s currency: China, an appreciation | The Economist

Advertisements