It Looks Like 1998 Again in China
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Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Of all the reporting trips I made inmy Washington days, flying with Lawrence Summers to Beijing sohe could kiss Zhu Rongji’s ring ranks among the mostfascinating.
Anyone who has spent inside of five minutes with Summersknows he’s not the groveling type. But this was in January 1998,when Summers was deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and BillClinton’s White House feared China would devalue the yuan andtoss more fuel onto Asia’s already blazing crisis. As we landedin Beijing, Zhu, China’s reformist premier-in-waiting, was theman to see first. Summers won pledges from Zhu not to weakenChina’s currency and to keep Hong Kong’s dollar pegged to theU.S.’s.