The Rise of Chinese Cheneys
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NYT
BEIJING
When Deng Xiaoping made a landmark visit to the United States in 1979, he was seated near the actress Shirley MacLaine. According to several accounts that Ms. MacLaine confirmed this week, she told Deng rhapsodically about a visit to China during the Cultural Revolution. She described meeting a scholar who had been sent to toil in the countryside but spoke glowingly about the joys of manual labor and the terrific opportunity to learn from peasants.
Deng growled: “He was lying.”
In that blunt spirit, let me offer a quick guide to some of the issues that we have put on the table during President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington, at a time when Chinese-American relations are deeply strained and likely to get worse. American opinion tends to be divided between panda-huggers (“China is fabulous!”) and panda-muggers (“China is evil!”), but the truth lies between this yin and yang.
Trade is at the heart of the tensions, and China is clearly keeping its currency artificially low (and probably will continue to do so) in an effort to preserve jobs at home. This is destabilizing the international system — but let’s not exaggerate the impact on our own economy. Chinese goods mostly compete with products from Mexico, South Korea and other countries, and it is stealing jobs from those countries more than from America.
(More here.)
NYT
BEIJING
When Deng Xiaoping made a landmark visit to the United States in 1979, he was seated near the actress Shirley MacLaine. According to several accounts that Ms. MacLaine confirmed this week, she told Deng rhapsodically about a visit to China during the Cultural Revolution. She described meeting a scholar who had been sent to toil in the countryside but spoke glowingly about the joys of manual labor and the terrific opportunity to learn from peasants.
Deng growled: “He was lying.”
In that blunt spirit, let me offer a quick guide to some of the issues that we have put on the table during President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington, at a time when Chinese-American relations are deeply strained and likely to get worse. American opinion tends to be divided between panda-huggers (“China is fabulous!”) and panda-muggers (“China is evil!”), but the truth lies between this yin and yang.
Trade is at the heart of the tensions, and China is clearly keeping its currency artificially low (and probably will continue to do so) in an effort to preserve jobs at home. This is destabilizing the international system — but let’s not exaggerate the impact on our own economy. Chinese goods mostly compete with products from Mexico, South Korea and other countries, and it is stealing jobs from those countries more than from America.
(More here.)
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