China yuan stability pledged

 

China's currency policy has been criticised by the West 

 

China's central bank says it plans to keep the Chinese yuan "stable" and there will be no immediate revaluation of the currency. 

The comments come just a day after the bank announced plans to make the exchange rate more flexible.
But Chinese authorities have ruled out a large, one-off adjustment in the exchange rate.

China has come under increasing international pressure to change its currency policy.

The US in particular has complained that China is artificially keeping the value of the yuan low to help its exporters at the expense of foreign competitors.

On Saturday, US President Barack Obama welcomed China's promise of increased flexibility in exchange rates, but the Chinese central bank's latest comments cast doubt over the scale of its plans.

"There is at present no basis for major fluctuation or change in the [yuan] exchange rate," the bank's website said.

G20 agenda

  The "basic stability" of the currency would be maintained, it added, and keeping the yuan at a "reasonable, balanced level" would help ensure economic stability.

"The management and adjustment of the [yuan] exchange rate needs to be done in a gradual way."

Continue reading the main story

The timing of China's exchange rate move is hardly accidental

Stephanie Flanders BBC economics editor Read Stephanie Flanders' blog

 

China has effectively pegged the yuan to the US dollar for the last two years.

In 2005, it briefly allowed a controlled appreciation of the currency, but ended that policy when the global economic crisis threatened demand for its goods abroad.

The yuan has stayed at around $0.147 since then, and would be expected to rise higher given a totally free exchange rate.

Analysts expect the yuan to appreciate slowly - by around 0.2% a month - in line with a recovery in demand from Europe.

"A stronger yuan would not only help prevent trade tensions from developing later in the year, but, more importantly, would help to keep China's recovery on a sustainable path and to rebalance its economy," commented Brian Jackson, a strategist at Royal Bank of Canada in Hong Kong.

China's currency policy was expected to be high on the agenda at the G20 summit to be held in Toronto later this month.

According to the BBC's economics editor Stephanie Flanders, the timing of China's concession is no coincidence.

"As usual, the wording is vague," she said.

"But the assumption must be that China plans to move back to the policy of allowing its exchange rate to appreciate in real terms against the dollar."

Newscribe : get free news in real time

China reiterates no one-off moves in RMB exchange rate reform

June 21, 2010

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) said Sunday it will not conduct a one-off revaluation of the RMB (yuan) exchange rate.

The PBOC said it will keep the yuan basically stable at a reasonable and balanced level and manage and adjust the RMB exchange rate based on the floating bands previously announced in the interbank foreign exchange market, a statement posted on its website said.

The PBOC aims to promote China's balance of international payments while safeguarding the stability of the nation's macro economy and financial markets, the statement said.

The statement came one day the PBOC announced it would further promote the reform of the RMB (yuan) exchange rate regime and increase the flexibility of the RMB exchange rate.

The move is in line with China's long-term fundamental interests, as it promotes the economic structure adjustments which will lead to sustainable growth.

The floating currency exchange rate will help guide resources to the service industries, which will upgrade the industry while reducing the nation's trade imbalance and its reliance on exports, the statement said.

The statement also said a flexible currency exchange rate regime will help curb inflation and asset bubbles and create a more favorable international development environment for China.

Sunday's statement emphasized the yuan be pegged to a basket of currencies given its close ties with a number of trade partners, adding that the U.S. dollar should not be the only gauge for judging the RMB exchange rate level.

Trade between China and the European Union in the first five months of the year accounted for 16.3 percent of China's total foreign trade volume, the statement said.

The United States, East Asian nations, and Japan accounted for 12.9 percent, 10.1 percent and 9.4 percent, respectively, according to the statement.

The PBOC decision signals its intention to leave the market more room to set the yuan's value, which is an irresistible trend and also a condition for the internationalization of the RMB, said Shen Minggao, Citibank's chief economist for greater China.

China moved to a managed floating exchange rate regime based on market supply and demand and referencing a basket of currencies on July 1, 2005.

The government narrowed fluctuation of the yuan's exchange rate in 2008 to keep the currency stable, in a bid to counter the global economic downturn, the statement said.

"A stable yuan was not only in the interests of China - it helped mitigate the impact of the global financial crisis," the statement said.

In the long run, currency reform will boost employment in the services sector, the statement said, adding that a floating exchange rate will prompt exports to shift to intensive processing, which will expand the industrial chain and create jobs.

But the statement noted a gradual adjustment is necessary to give enterprises time to adjust their business structure.

Source: Xinhua

 

Newscribe : get free news in real time 

'Social Network' poster, Web site unveiled

Actor Jesse Eisenberg plays Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 'The Social Network,' coming out this fall.

(Credit: Columbia Pictures)

 

"YOU DON'T GET TO 500 MILLION FRIENDS WITHOUT MAKING A FEW ENEMIES," reads the tagline on the first official poster for "The Social Network," the upcoming Columbia Pictures film about the origins of Facebook.

The all-caps text covers the entire poster, superimposed over the face of young actor Jesse Eisenberg, who wears an expression of awe on the cusp of metamorphosing into malevolence. In "The Social Network," due in theaters this October, Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in his dorm room at Harvard University and ultimately turned it into a digital empire with nearly 500 million members. In a skinny side bar on the poster--which is otherwise dominated by Eisenberg's face, tousled curly hair, and sloppy gray hoodie--the title "The Social Network" is laid out in the manner of Facebook's own font and navigation bar, with the movie Web site 500millionfriends.com depicted as though it had just been typed in a search box.

Blogger Nick Douglas called the poster "beautiful" and "ready-made" to go viral on the Web, noting that the placement of the logo makes the whole thing look like it's on an iPad.

This is a movie that Hollywood is taking seriously: with director David Fincher ("Fight Club," "Zodiac") working with a script by Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing") and a cast of well-regarded young actors, there are now rumors that Columbia parent company Sony Pictures Entertainment is pushing back the release date of the next Gus Van Sant film, "Restless," to January in order to focus end-of-year marketing energy and potentially Oscar buzz generation on "The Social Network."

The movie, however, doesn't have Facebook's blessing. Based on author Ben Mezrich's ribald, unauthorized tell-all "The Accidental Billionaires," the storyline doesn't present a favorable view of Zuckerberg. Facebook has dismissed the tale as fanciful gossip, but audiences who've read unfavorable headlines recently about the company may think differently.

By Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 

 

Newscribe : get free news in real time 

 

Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

It's nice if a pilot has a background in flying. It's really quite special if a colonoscopist has a background in medicine. But does everyone who heads up a department at Google really need to have a background in engineering?

I should be lying in the sun rather than pondering this existential mind-twister, but I was moved past reluctance by a blog post written by Don Dodge, developer advocate at Google.

Dodge, who used to perform advocacy at Microsoft, wrote this post to celebrate surviving--I'm sorry, I mean enjoying--six months at Google.

In a section titled "Engineering Rules!," Dodge offered the following: "Google has always been driven by outstanding engineering talent. Google hires only the best engineers. The legends of complex interview questions and coding problems are true. Educational achievement is valued at Google."

Do complex interview questions really test your educational achievement? Or do they merely test your ability to answer complex questions asked by, no doubt, complex people--people with certain complexes--in an interview situation?

But even that mind-number isn't the one that keeps me from the sand.

It was this: "Engineers are at every level, starting at the top, in all kinds of positions at Google. Nearly all the top management at Google have engineering backgrounds. Marketing, sales, business development, product management, are all more likely to be former engineers."

My troubled educational achievement suggests to me that Dodge is holding up this intellectual monochrome of leadership as a good thing. He is suggesting that this is a company that is so immersed in engineering that only those who understand its complex rudiments can be trusted to, say, market Google's products.

I believe this is an image from a Google presentation called "The Joys of Engineering Leadership."

(Credit: CC DailyLifeofMojo/Flickr)

 

This is how Dodge explained it: "The engineering background brings a rigorous thought process that questions assumptions and requires accurate data in the decision process. That doesn't mean every decision will be perfect, but it will be based on data...not opinions."

Perhaps some will be heartened, given how much information Google manages to collect about their everyday interests and proclivities, that Google is a company where opinions do not rule.

Yet there is something slightly shiver-making about this supposed data worship. It might remind some of frenzied arguments they have had with the lovers when one party screams at the other: "You just don't understand me! You're not an engineer!"

Is it really possible that there exist so few human beings beyond the educationally superior dome of Google who might not be able to muster an idea or two about how Google might market its highly complex engineering products? You know, like those highly complex all-copy ads that sit at the side of search results?

Does one really need a background in engineering to wonder how best to offer real people, whose closest relationship to engineering might come every time they go over a bridge while humming along with their iPods, a browser?

And how much of an engineering background does it take to decide which of 41 shades of blue really is the right one?

Please, I don't wish to offend the world's greatest engineering talents. Whether they work for Google or not. If I say something too mean, I know they have the power to sever my ability to communicate with the world.

They could prevent me from watching Justin Bieber videos. They could steal information from my Wi-Fi signals, reveal all the e-mails I have written to my closest friends, Cameron Diaz, Lady Gaga, and the archbishop of New York. They could make it so that my garage remote control will never work again.

However, I wonder whether such slight, but no doubt data-driven, infelicities, such as the launch of Google Buzz, the riotously misguided home page designs, or the launch of Nexus One, might have done with one or two fewer data-driven managers and one or two more people who offered suggestions about what real people like and how they might react?

Google does many interesting and clever things. But, at this stage of its development, its office does seem to be full of too many people with the emotional maturity of Dwight Schrute.

At a time when the company needs to create more products that become an essential part of real people's lives, it often seems incapable of communicating the worth and, dare one suggest, the magic of such products to those very people.

In my fanciful though intellectually inferior way of thinking, I can see the head of Google's marketing department walking into a Parisian bakery, ordering the most exquisite pastry, tasting it, delighting in its complex wonder until his lips are moist beyond imagining.

Then he hears the lady behind the counter say: "Ze baker. He has a degree in archaeology."

A true Googlie would, naturally, put the pastry down and walk out of the bakery. Well, at least that's what the data would tell him to do, wouldn't it?

Newscribe : get free news in real time

By Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.