My colleague Emre Ergungor brought this Financial Times article to my attention.
In a mark of China's growing economic confidence, the country's central bank has offered blunt advice to Washington about its ballooning trade deficit and unemployment.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Li Ruogu, the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, warned the US not to blame other countries for its economic difficulties...
Mr Li said China could only permit greater renminbi flexibility after creating a domestic financial infrastructure, including reformed banks and developed markets, able to cope with a more liberalised currency mechanism; considering the conditions and the wishes of neighbouring Asian economies on any move towards a more flexible system; and educating people on how to deal with a new exchange rate system, teaching them how to hedge...
“The appreciation of the RMB will not solve the problems of unemployment in the US because the cost of labour in China is only three per cent that of US labour. They should give up textiles, shoe-making and even agriculture probably.
“They should concentrate on sectors like aerospace and then sell those things to us and we would spend billions on this. We could easily balance the trade.”
So there.