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Karen Christensen

Karen Christensen

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Tom Christensen

Tom Christensen

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Judy Polumbaum

Judy Polumbaum

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Unryu Suganuma

Unryu Suganuma

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Haiwang Yuan

Haiwang Yuan

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Yu Zhou

Yu Zhou

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Looking for the Chinese As A Scapegoat

Following the Financial Times chief economics commentator Martin Wolf’s article “Asian Revenge” (Financial Times October 8, 2008, my blog “Asia’s Revenge” Is Nonsense! on 17 November 2008), and his book Fixing Global Finance in 2008, Sebastian Mallaby’s article (title: “Opec has a lesson for China”) began to look at China as scapegoat again in the Washington Post (Washington Post 25 January 2009). Japan was a scapegoat when the United States had huge deficits during the 1980s; China might be the target with respect to the meltdown on Wall Street. It is not coincidence that the U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner comments that “President Obama – backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists – believes that China is manipulating its currency” (Xinhua News). The comments released from the Senate Finance Committee on January 23, 2009. This is the first comment made by the Obama administration on Sino-U.S. relations. Geithner’s remark might spark worries for many Chinese leaders in Beijing. Will the US go the protectionism road? Might the Chinese leaders decide not to buy US bonds anymore? Will the US and China begin a trade war? It will be fun to watch next four years of Obama’s U.S.-China foreign policy.

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