2nd October 08

Asia Times Online

Sinophobia smolders in Malaysia
By Hui Yew-Foong

SINGAPORE - As an ethnic minority in most of Southeast Asia, the Chinese have, from time to time, been subject to outbursts of anti-Chinese sentiments. The latest tirade came from Ahmad Ismail, a division chief of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) in Penang, Malaysia earlier this month. The UMNO is the leading component party of the ruling coalition, Barisan National (BN). According to a local Chinese newspaper, the Sinchew Daily, Ahmad had said that the "Chinese were merely squatting in Malaysia", and thereby "do not deserve equal rights".

Chinese doubts weigh on commodities
By R M Cutler

MONTREAL - United States market declines on Monday were well under way in New York before it became clear that the US House of Representatives would vote down Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's US$700 billion financial sector bailout proposal then in front of them. Every member of the chamber is up for re-election this year, and the Republicans who made the difference on the bill had been hearing from their constituents against it.

China eases open bonds door
By Pieter Bottelier

The transfer in China of responsibility for the approval of medium- and long-term corporate bond issues by listed companies from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) to the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC ) may turn out to be a watershed decision in China's transition to a more market-oriented economy. Depending on how this institutional change is followed through in practice, it marks a potentially important relaxation of state control over the economy

CHINA'S DOLLAR MILLSTONE, Part 4
Gold, manipulation and domination
By Henry C K Liu

All over the world, trade in gold had been the favored device for evading national foreign exchange controls from the end of World War II to 1971. In 1946, the Bretton Woods regime adopted in 1944 became operational, thereby forbidding the importation of gold for private speculative purposes in signatory nations. Britain was a signatory but Portugal was not. Thus a gold-smuggling operation between the Portugal colony of Macau and the British territory of Hong Kong flourished until 1974, two years after the United States took the dollar off gold, in effect abolishing the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, when Hong Kong abolished a law that requires a special license to import gold for re-export.