BEIJING, April 5 (Reuters) – The U.S. decision to delay a ruling on whether China manipulates its currency showed easing tensions over the yuan, but it is too early for China to change its currency policy, a government economist said on Monday.
“I believe this is a positive signal. At least the U.S. side has created some room for further consultations and negotiations,” said Huo Jianguo, head of the Commerce Ministry’s think-thank.
“But I don’t think there will be a yuan adjustment in the near-term. We need to to see whether China’s export recovery will be sustained and need to see whether companies can cope with a stronger yuan,” he told Reuters.
The ministry’s repeated warnings that many firms would be ruined and millions of jobs lost if the yuan strengthened stand in contrast to the central bank’s signals that it would welcome a more flexible currency and its dampening effect on inflation.
Analysts believe, however, the two institutions will eventually reach a compromise, possibly as soon as mid-2010.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Saturday he was delaying an April 15 report on whether China manipulates its currency but pledged to press for a more flexible yuan policy.
The decision follows Thursday’s announcement that Chinese President Hu Jintao will attend a nuclear security summit meeting in Washington April 12-13 and seems to be a move to keep tensions over currency in check. [ID:nTOE63100K]
Huo said many Chinese exporters oppose a stronger currency out of fear that their thin profit margins could be wiped out.
Any yuan policy change would ultimately depend on China’s own economic interests, although the impact on other countries would also be taken into account, he said.
China’s exports jumped 45.7 percent in February from a year earlier but the growth may have been exaggerated by the low base, while imports were growing at a faster clip due to robust domestic, slashing the trade surplus, he said.
Huo echoed recent official forecasts that that China could post a small trade deficit in March, the first since 2004.
“This may help ease upward pressure on the yuan. We need to watch whether the trade deficit is short-lived or it’s a turning point,” Huo said. (Reporting by Kevin Yao; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
Spanking found to have negative effects on low-income toddlers
Washington, September 16 (ANI): Spanking negatively affects the behaviour of toddlers in low-income families, according to a new study.
Published in the journal Child Development, the longitudinal study looked at how low-income parents discipline their young children.
It showed that spanking 1-year-olds leads to more aggressive behaviours and less sophisticated cognitive development in the next two years.
Verbal punishment, however, was not found to be associated with such effects, especially when it was accompanied by emotional support from mothers.
Besides, 1-year-olds’ fussiness predicted spanking and verbal punishment at ages 1, 2, and 3.
The study explored whether mothers’ behaviours lead to problematic behaviour in children, whether children’s challenging behaviours elicit harsher discipline, or both.
It looked at more than 2,500 exclusively low-income White, African American, and Mexican-American mothers and their young children, interviewing and observing them at home when the children were 1, 2, and 3 years old.
All participants’ family incomes were at or below the federal poverty level.
Using their own interpretations of spanking, mothers reported how often anyone in the home had spanked their children in the past week.
The study also looked at how often mothers verbally punished-scolded, yelled, or made negative comments-their children.
It showed that African American children were spanked and verbally punished significantly more than the other children in the study.
The authors speculated that that might be due to cultural factors, such as belief in the importance of children’s respect for elders and in the value of physical discipline to instil that respect.
Moreover, some African American mothers said that in preparing their children for a harsh, physically dangerous, and racially discriminating world, there was little room for error in their childrearing.
The study also shed light on information about the effects of such types of discipline.
“Our findings clearly indicate that spanking affects children’s development,” said Lisa J. Berlin, research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University and the study’s lead author.
Specifically, children who were spanked more often at 1 behaved more aggressively when they were 2, and had lower scores on tests measuring thinking skills when they were 3.
Similar findings were made even after taking into consideration such family characteristics as mothers’ race and ethnicity, age, and education; family income and structure; and the children’s gender.
The study also found that children who were more aggressive at age 2, and had lower cognitive development scores at ages 1 and 2, were not spanked more at ages 2 and 3.
“So the mothers’ behaviours look more influential than the children’s,” said Berlin.
Unlike spanking, however, verbal punishment alone didn’t affect either children’s aggression or their cognitive development.
Interestingly, when verbal punishment was accompanied by emotional support from moms, the children did better on the tests of cognitive ability. (ANI)