Asia

Last year proved to be yet another strong economic period for China. Within the Pan-Asian region, China's spending spree in the last couple of years has directly benefited its neighboring economies, as the rest of the developed world continue to work slowly through the most painful global recession on record.

China's effort to create an offshore international market for its currency in Hong Kong has generated huge excitement. Since China liberalized trade settlement and investment rules last July, large amount of CNH (CNY that are freely traded in Hong Kong) has accumulated in Hong Kong's banking system.

China is eager to successfully "internationalize" its currency, as it looks to further promote international trade and associated trade settlement. But as always, it will proceed on its own terms despite global demand for change.

While the U.S. unleashes a stampede of fiscal and monetary stimulus to keep its economy from stalling and deflation from taking hold, China is wrestling with a festering inflation problem and has begun taking steps to rein in its policy accommodation measures.

In light of China's status as the world's largest exporter with the largest trade surplus, undervaluation of the CNY has been criticized by other nations in the latest IMF and G7 meetings. This issue has dragged on for years, but has become increasingly sensitive lately in the face of lingering high unemployment in the U.S. and Europe amid the slow recovery from the recession.

On June 19, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) vowed to increase the Chinese CNY's flexibility and abandoned a 23-month-old peg to the USD. Chinese authorities had prevented the currency from strengthening, with the CNY essentially pegged to the USD since July 2008 to help exporters cope with sliding demand triggered by the global financial crisis.