As China’s renminbi has been included in the IMF elite currencies and the Fed has started its rate hikes, conventional wisdom sees the RMB weakening and U.S. dollar strengthening as simple long-term trends. The realities are far more complex, however.

Historic gains in the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share stock markets are causing some Western analysts to speculate that the growth is being driven by irrational behavior. There are both institutional and individual explanations for this over-confidence, which will need to monitored if the market contracts.

The end of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing (QE) monetary policy will affect U.S. growth predictions over the next two years, and may weaken the U.S. dollar. However, as Xiao Lian contends, this might not have an obvious impact on China, yet could result in new development opportunities – as well as new risks.

In late February, the gradual appreciation of the renminbi was interrupted by a 1% depreciation. The resulting international outcry obscured a troubling feature of China’s exchange-rate policy: the tendency for sporadic renminbi appreciation (even small movements) to trigger speculative inflows of “hot” money.

Recent fluctuations in the Chinese yuan have given way to far-flung fears that the Chinese economy is faltering. However, Michael Justin Lee explains that the yuan’s fall against the U.S. Dollar was engineered by the People’s Bank of China and was necessary to reduce hot money the Chinese economy slows.