Thursday, October 21, 2010

Open the flood gates, why RMB should be freely floating

Well, the most common excuse or reason for China to not want an appreciation of the RMB against USD is that, alledgely, the Chinese export industry has waffer thin margins, say 2-3% only. To which I say, raise the prices ahead of time before letting the RMB go up. Why? China is NOT Japan, despite the fact that the Chinese economy has already surpassed Japan as No. 1 in Asia, the per capita GDP is still approximately only 1/10th of Japan's. Chinese workers are still immensely competitive in the world.

Sure, compared to other "Southern Asians" countries, who are much more competitive/cheaper still in terms of wages, say India, Bangladesh, Indonesian, Chinese workers are typically more productive than South Asians, both according to intelligence quotients measures and historical/anecdotal references. (Well, the averages of the IQ of Chinese/South Koreans/Japanese are similar among themselves, and we already know what the Samsungs and Sonies of the world are capable of. The Taiwanese are part of the Chinese flora as well, Acer lovers anyone?)

So, I am willing to gamble that hiking the prices of goods, say by 20-30%, and then let the RMB freely float and move up by say another 20-30%, which would result in the compounded effect of a price raise of say 50%, is still going to be "competitive" and cheaper than stuff made in the US of A/Europe/Japan and they will still HAVE to go buy stuff Made in China.

Of course, then the South Asians would invade into Chinese's market share, but China got to buy their raw materials cheaper by 20-30%, that's gotta juice up the margin (plus the original price hike, which is a 50% up in profit margin), making up, at least in part, of the lost profits from the shrinking revenue.

Did I mention the BONUS of getting US off of China's back by eliminating the excuse for the US to violate WTO rules by slapping tarriffs on Chinese goods? Sounds like a plan?
Share/Bookmark

No comments:

Post a Comment