Rising yuan in the land of setting yen

By Dr Sanjaya Baru, Director for Geo-Economics and Strategy

The directors of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank return to Tokyo this week for their annual meetings after a gap of 48 years. It’s a different Japan. The aging of the host nation, the rise of China, the ‘shift’ of the epicentre of global growth to mainland Asia, in more ways than one, have subdued what was in 1964 – when the Fund and Bank last met here – the ‘land of the rising Yen’. The ‘shocks’ administered to the global economy by the recent trans-Atlantic financial crisis have further accelerated these ‘shifts’, and the Yuan now rises where the Yen once shined.

First ‘Asian-origin’ president

While the Bank arrives in Tokyo with a South Korea-born American as its first ‘Asian-origin’ president, the Fund arrives with its first Chinese deputy managing director, who got the job as part of a deal with the European Union. This would rub even more salt into the wounded pride of a Japan that tried hard for long to get one of the top jobs and repeatedly failed because the West would not accommodate Asia till China stared it in its face.

Read the full article in The Hindu

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