BETTING BIG ON CHINA

David Leonhardt says it’s not the exchange rate of the renminbi:

Few would dispute China’s importance to the world economy today; from small villages to large cities, its presence is now felt almost everywhere. The Economist recently went so far as to call China “the indispensable economy,” reporting that more and more multinational companies are realizing an increased share of their revenues from inside Chinese borders.

By Hawkinvest:The stock market in China has been one of the worst-performing indexes in the world for the past few months. Even many European indexes have outperformed China, in spite of an ongoing debt crisis and record levels of unemployment. The Shanghai Composite Index is down about 17% in the past year. With major weakness in many Chinese stocks, it could be a great time to buy for the long term.

CHINA'S rise is, by any account, a remarkable story. The world's most populous country, China represented an outsized share of global output for centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution. As the industrial west rose, China fell behind, then fell further behind amid occupation, revolution, and communist mismanagement. But then, about thirty years ago, China's luck changed. Its leaders embarked on a path toward liberalisation, and its economy began to grow. Having fallen so far behind, China had plenty of ground to make up, and growth rates soared toward double-digits.

by Larry Kantor, Head of Research, Barclays,

From Steve Craven comes more evidence today that the Mainstream Media are finally catching on to the fact that the US government's obsession with China's currency is really misguided.  On monday, the WSJ's Peter Stein saw the light, and today the NYT's David Leonhardt does the same:

Inquiring minds are looking at charts from the New York Times that show U.S. Trade in 2012 Outpaced Many Other Countries.

Peter Morici submits:Google’s (GOOG) censorship struggle with Beijing crystallizes the challenge China poses to American global leadership.Until the Google imbroglio, we heard much about China’s undervalued currency and subsidized exports, rough treatment of foreign investors and purchases of US debt, but not enough about Beijing’s restrictions on unfretted access to information, expression and self determination.Americans