http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/business/global/15yuan.html?scp=1&sq=China%20trade%20&st=cse
This article is concerned with China’s trade policies. Every since 2010, the Obama administration has pressured China to let its currency appreciate. Beijing, despite facing criticism from the US and other parts of the world, refuses to let Renminbi appreciate. The appreciation of Renmibi will be detrimental to China’s exports, which is of crucial importance to China’s economy.
China is one example of how developing countries benefit from protectionism. Ha-Joon Chang in his book Bad Samaritans points out that during the Asia financial crisis in 1998, lots of Asia countries’ currency depreciates substantively, due to the flight of the large amount of foreign monetary investment, because all these countries have opened their investment market to foreign companies. China survived this crisis intact. One of the reasons is Beijing’s refusal to open its financial market, based on its own evaluations of interests. Facing the suggestions and temptations of opening its financial markets from experts of WTO and IMF, China has insisted that it should base its policies on its own situations, rather than a development formula. This point is actually coincides with the point Michael N. Barnett and Martha Finnemore made in their article The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations. They point out that the suggestions and policies offered by IOs usually cannot work very well because those policies are not made for a specific area. Instead, they are just some general formulas based on theories.
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This is a good illustration of the arguments made in Ha-Joon Chang's book. China has denied the WTO and IMF by looking out for its own interests. Chang says, "Paradoxically, therefore, 'free' trade policy reduces the 'freedom' of the developing countries that practice it...trade helps economic development only when the country employees a mixture of protection and open trade..." In addition, when a country chooses a path different than the one suggested by the international community, it is often looked down on. Since China is not letting its currency appreciate, it is therefore receiving this treatment.
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