Someone needs to take responsibility, and since US politicians don’t want to blame themselves, the best available scapegoat is China and its exchange rate, which has not appreciated against the dollar in 18 months….China may resume a managed float of its exchange rate, particularly if the uncertainty of the overall post-crisis economic situation diminishes. If the adjustment came abruptly, Chinese companies would suffer a sudden loss of competitiveness.

—Fan Gang, adviser to the PBOC: via China Daily. Fan offers that a rapid rise might also introduce inflation into the US “forcing the US Federal Researve to tighten monetary policy and possibly undermining the US’ recovery.”

But the U.S. cannot improve its trade balance unless the dollar falls. Measured by the dollar index, therefore, capital losses on China’s foreign exchange reserves are inevitable….As a result, China’s dollar-denominated foreign-exchange reserves, which account for the largest share of all the foreign holdings of U.S. government securities, will suffer interest-rate losses.

—Yu Yongding, framing the US attitude as follows, “the dollar is our currency, but your problem.” He would argue for granting China the ability to convert their treasury holdings to SDRs, and barring the US ability to “safeguard the value of its securities, it should compensate China in one way or another”: via Korea Times.

The U.S. has three aims in pushing yuan appreciation: to slow down China’s growth rate, to make China depend more on the U.S. and the U.S. dollars and to pluck Renminbi yuan’s position as a international currency

—Xiang Songzuo, Renmin University, opening an aggressive line of criticism against US policy: character one, via People’s Daily

The U.S. itself benefit most from the depreciation of its currency, leaving other countries and the fragile global recovery the victims

—Shi Jianxun, professor of Tongji University, articulating the implicit sense of victimization that pervades much of this discussion: character two, via People’s Daily

The U.S. government wishes to eliminate trade deficit and ease its high unemployment rate by pushing yuan appreciation. That was only its wishful thinking

—Yi Xianrong, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, exchanging the sense of victimization of the detached criticism of the experienced elder who knows better: character three, via People’s Daily