Xinhua Insight: Shanghai FTZ tests China’s currency liberalization – Xinhua | English.news.cn

by Xinhua writers Zhang Yi and Yao Yujie

SHANGHAI, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) — Among a cluster of warehouses located on the outskirts of Shanghai, China is set to experiment one of its most significant reforms since Shenzhen freed the country’s trade 33 years ago — how China should liberalize its currency.

The world’s second largest economy announced it would build a free trade zone (FTZ) on the shore of the East China Sea. The zone will be a test bed for pushing forward full convertibility of the Chinese yuan and the opening of financial services.

As China’s economy has showed signs of stabilizing during the last two months, economic transitions and reforms are again becoming the focus of attention.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said at Summer Davos Forum on Wednesday that China’s modernization will not be accomplished without reform, nor will it be achieved without opening-up, citing Shanghai FTZ as one of the new ways to open the country w

via Xinhua Insight: Shanghai FTZ tests China’s currency liberalization – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

Shanghai Sets Stage For More Powerful, More Open China Economy – Forbes

Shanghai’s newly created free trade zone is setting the stage for that city of 14 million people to become Asia’s center for international trade and finance. Move over Hong Kong, get ready to be Shanghai surprised.“This free trade zone in China is a real game changer,” says hedge fund manager Joel Smolen from Axion Capital Management in San Rafel, Calif.

via Shanghai Sets Stage For More Powerful, More Open China Economy – Forbes.

What the French Revolution can teach China – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs

Editor’s note: Ziad Haider is director of the Truman National Security Project’s Asia Expert Group. He served as a White House Fellow in the U.S. Department of Justice and as a national security aide in the U.S. Senate. You can follow him @Asia_Hand. The views expressed are his own.

“Let China sleep; when she awakes, she will shake the world.” Uttered by Napoleon Bonaparte two centuries ago, these words now seem prescient. Yet pitfalls a plenty remain in China’s rise. Chief among these, of course, is the stability and legitimacy of one-party rule. But why has the Chinese leadership turned to another Frenchman, political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville? Why has his classic work The Old Regime and the Revolution become a best seller in China? And ultimately, what lessons can Beijing learn from the French Revolution?

via What the French Revolution can teach China – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs.

China on verge of worst economic crisis in decades – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs

Back in 2001, Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill coined the term BRICs to describe the key fast growing developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. But a dozen years later, is the focus on the BRICs misplaced? Indeed, is the group “broken,” as Morgan Stanley’s Ruchir Sharma has suggested?

“Although the world can expect more breakout nations to emerge from the bottom income tier, at the top and the middle, the new global economic order will probably look more like the old one than most observers predict,” Sharma wrote earlier this year. “The rest may continue to rise, but they will rise more slowly and unevenly than many experts are anticipating. And precious few will ever reach the income levels of the developed world.”

Each day this week, a leading analyst will assess the prospects of a BRIC nation and weigh in on whether it still deserves its place in a group of economic high flyers. Today, Minxin Pei looks at China, the only country that Sharma was relatively upbeat about.

via China on verge of worst economic crisis in decades – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs.