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China’s watching the debates, even most Americans aren’t
With the 2008 U.S. presidential race well underway, China is paying attention.
China has long played punching bag to American politicians on issues like human rights abuses, tainted China-made products, the trade imbalance and lost American jobs. China is “the most convenient of all bogeymen,” the South China Morning Post noted in a recent editorial.
But the dominant English-language newspaper of Hong Kong warns the presidential candidates to be careful.
“Those who insist on China bashing should think before speaking,” it says, chiding the Democratic frontrunners Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama for criticizing China for not allowing its currency, the yuan, strengthen against the dollar.
While China is “the perfect pariah for the U.S.”, protecting the relationship between Washington and Beijing is more important, says the paper, which is independent but has a pro-Beijing tilt.
“In putting their case to potential voters that [China] has taken U.S. jobs, they are crying foul over alleged currency manipulation, the trade imbalance and the safety of imports,” the Hong Kong paper says.
Clinton warned last week that the U.S. must deal with China’s “currency manipulation.”
“If they’re manipulating their currency … we take them to the mat,” Obama said at a forum hosted by the AFL-CIO.
The paper warned the candidates against pushing the rhetoric too far.
The Chinese yuan, also called the renminbi, has risen more than 9 percent in value since 2005 and China has rejected calls for faster appreciation, a good call, the newspaper opines, stating that appreciation “should be done gradually so that the banking and export sectors are not destablilized.”
“When considering the widening trade gap, it must be remembered that the U.S. dollar is falling in value and that one-third of exports to the U.S. are from American companies with factories in China,” it adds.
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