Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga urged Chinese leaders at a meeting in Beijing to allow their currency to appreciate at a faster pace, joining calls from governments in Europe and the US.
Nukaga and five other Japanese ministers met with Chinese officials including Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan (
"I have asked China to consider letting the yuan rise at the fastest possible pace," the minister told reporters after the so-called High-Level Economic Dialogues. "The Chinese side responded that it will deal with the issue with flexibility."
European officials visiting China last week said a stronger yuan would help tame inflation that's running at the highest rate in a decade, and shrink its trade surplus. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (
G7 finance ministers and central bankers meeting in Washington in October singled out China, saying it should make the yuan more flexible to help resolve global trade imbalances.
The yuan has risen about 10 percent against the yen and 12 percent versus the US dollar since China scrapped a peg to the US currency in July 2005. The Chinese yuan, which is now linked to a basket of currencies, has fallen about 7 percent versus the euro.
"China should gradually move toward a free exchange rate," said Xinyi Lu (
Japan welcomes China's policy of "improving flexibility of the Chinese currency," according to a joint communique released late on Saturday in Beijing. The talks were organized in April by Japan's then prime minister Shinzo Abe and Wen.
Nukaga, who met European Central Bank (ECB) policy maker Christian Noyer in Tokyo last Tuesday, says China's strong economy and expanding trade surplus merit more yuan flexibility.
The Chinese economy, the biggest contributor to world growth, expanded 11.5 percent in the third quarter, increasing pressure for faster appreciation and higher borrowing costs to curb inflation. Consumer prices rose 6.5 percent in October from a year earlier, matching a decade high in August, a government report showed last month.
ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said on Wednesday it is in China's interest to let its currency rise faster.
Nukaga, in addition, told Wen that he and his counterpart are likely to meet again some time in "cherry blossom season," said a Japanese foreign ministry official, who asked not to be identified. Cherry blossom typically blooms around April in Japan.
Chinese Finance Minister Xie Xuren (
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
A registered sex offender from the US who went missing after entering Taiwan has been found and would be deported in light of the risk he poses to the public, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday. The agency launched a search for Levi Forrest Wallace, 43, after it was informed by the American Institute of Taiwan (AIT) that he had entered Taiwan on Oct. 2 on a tourist visa. He was not on the US government’s wanted list. Wallace was sentenced to 90 days in jail with a two-year probation in 2001 after he was convicted of sexual delinquency of
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