Econo Blogosphere Entertains on China v US Currency Wars. [FT | The Economist | NYTimes | Bloomberg]

Dollar Down. Renminbi Up. Only questions are how and when?

Let China Sleep, For When She Wakes, She Will Shake the World.

Reposting an old review of the essential China Shakes the World by James Kynge.

Gendercide and the Global Immersion Program | Shanghai.

Global Immersion China post: Shang-Jin Wei thinks Male : Female rations can explain China’s outsized saving rate.

Glen Hubbard Interview. [The Economist]

Dean Glenn Hubbard is doing book promo for his latest: The Aid Trap

How China Sees the World and the Middle East

Interesting Q&A with Ben Simpendorfer on two pet obsessions China and the Middle East in The New Yorker.

Grads’ Global Popularity Charts.

Where are US college students most excited about launching their careers?

Luxury Retail Gulf.

The Gulf luxury retail market is set for a painful slowdown after years of impressive growth but it remains one of the industry’s few relatively bright spots.

China Shakes The World. James Kynge.

James Kynge, former china bureau chief of best newspaper in the world (The Financial Times), won the FT / Goldman Sachs business book of the year award in 1996 with ‘china shakes the world’ which is a superb, concise introduction to how and why china is shaping our world.
the first half tells the condensed history of china’s post-cultural revolution rise and illuminates its leading position during much of the last six thousand years.
the book starts off recounting the mysterious disappearance of manhole covers all over the world (with plenty of reports of unsuspecting pedestrians falling into the suddenly-there holes from Mongolia to Montreal) as a signal of when the direction of the world – China relationship switched: the view of China flipped from how the outside world was changing China to how China was affecting the rest of the world. China’s voracious appetite for almost every conceivable resource including the scrap metal that those manholes were destined to become was just one signal that the causal direction was switching.
James has plenty of engaging first-hand accounts from his two decades living in china through which it often seems we are witnessing China’s economic transformation unfold through his eyes.

Some of the major themes / ideas that run throughout include:

* businesses everywhere are finding it harder to compete (manufacturers in particular), the sustainability of europe’s welfare state model is in question as the industrial base there is hollowed out.
* china out-competes and out-capitalizes everyone, especially America.
* Chinese possess the impressive combo of intelligence and second-to-none work ethic.
* china through lowering the cost of goods and its insatiable appetite for us treasuries (in part to manage its currency) has fueled the low-iinterest rate driven housing boom and general drive for yield that has resulted in the current sub-prime, credit-crunch, free-fall dollar mess we’re in.
* 400 million people have been lifted above the poverty line over the last 28 years of above 9.5% economic growth.