Tag: Renminbi (Currency)

How the U.S. Is Trying to Ensure the Dollar’s Dominance During Economic Turmoil

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The summit between President Trump and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing this week is likely to include tense discussions about tariffs, Taiwan, Iran and sanctions. But simmering below the surface is another battle between the United States and China: an intensifying currency war. Concerns about America’s mounting debt load and its aggressive use of sanctions to cut adversaries off from the Western financial system have raised doubts about the safety of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Those fears have led to growing demand for gold and…

War and Sanctions Accelerate China’s Currency Push

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Neat rows of Chinese currency bills sit behind glass at the center of the national security gallery inside Hong Kong’s Museum of History, along with model fighter jets, attack helicopters and vials of rare-earth metals. Set with instruments of war and trade, the display underscores a central idea: The internationalization of its currency, the renminbi, is considered a pillar of China’s national security. Despite its rise as an economic superpower, China remains reliant on a global financial system anchored by the dollar. Turning the renminbi into a globally accepted currency…

As China’s Markets Stumble, Japan Rises Toward Record

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There’s a shift underway in Asia that’s reverberating through global financial markets. Japan’s stock market, overlooked by investors for decades, is making a furious comeback. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index is edging closer to the record it set on Dec. 29, 1989, which effectively marked the peak of Japan’s economic ascendancy before a collapse that led to decades of low growth. China, long an impossible-to-ignore market, has been spiraling downward. Stocks in China recently touched lows not seen since a rout in 2015, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was…

Gold Bars and Tokyo Apartments: How Money Is Flowing Out of China.

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Affluent Chinese have moved hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country this year, seizing on the end of Covid precautions that had almost completely sealed China’s borders for nearly three years. They are using their savings to buy overseas apartments, stocks and insurance policies. Able to fly again to Tokyo, London and New York, Chinese travelers have bought apartments in Japan and poured money into accounts in the United States or Europe that pay higher interest than in China, where rates are low and falling. The outbound shift…

Country Garden, China’s Indebted Developer, Meets Payment Deadline

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Country Garden, China’s biggest property developer, told creditors that it had made a late interest payment, averting an immediate default on its debts and keeping the company financially viable for the time being. Last month, the company missed two interest payments totaling $22.5 million on bonds that had been sold in U.S. dollars. It had a 30-day grace period to make the payment or risk default. The grace period ended this week. Country Garden told the bondholders that it had made the payment within the grace period, a person close…

Pan Gongsheng Named Head of Chinese Central Bank

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For nearly eight years Pan Gongsheng has overseen one of the world’s biggest pots of money: China’s $3 trillion in foreign currency reserves. Now he will run the country’s central bank, playing an even more powerful role in the Chinese economy. Mr. Pan, a prominent economist, was named on Tuesday as governor of the central bank, the People’s Bank of China. He had already been installed as the bank’s Communist Party secretary on July 1. It will be the first time in five years that one person will hold both…

Yellen’s China Visit Aims to Ease Tensions Amid Deep Divisions

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The last time a U.S. Treasury secretary visited China, Washington and Beijing were locked in a trade war, the Trump administration was preparing to label China a currency manipulator, and fraying relations between the two countries were roiling global markets. Four years later, as Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen prepares to arrive in Beijing, many of the economic policy concerns that have been festering between the United States and China remain — or have even intensified — despite the Biden administration’s less antagonistic tone. The tariffs that President Donald J.…

China’s Economic Rebound Hits a Wall, With ‘No Quick Fix’ to Revive It

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When China suddenly dismantled its lockdowns and other Covid precautions last December, officials in Beijing and many investors expected the economy to spring back to life. It has not worked out that way. Investment in China has stagnated this spring after a flurry of activity in late winter. Exports are shrinking. Fewer and fewer new housing projects are being started. Prices are falling. More than one in five young people is unemployed. China has tried many fixes over the last few years when its economy had flagged, like heavy borrowing…