James Fallows on the RMB

After the Obama Administration avoided declaring China a "currency manipulator" this spring, the Chinese government let the RMB start appreciating again. This was assumed to be a pre-greased understanding: as long as the Chinese government wasn't forced to "knuckle under" to foreign pressure, it could start moving in the right direction. Then, after a very short time, the appreciation stopped -- this chart shows the movement over the past year:


What we're seeing here: the essentially frozen exchange rate until June of this year, then the brief strengthening of the RMB's value through June and until early July -- and then the reverse trend, through much of the summer, of the RMB weakening again against the dollar. Finally, starting about a month ago, the Chinese government let the RMB's value starting rising once more.

On the RMB