China was an attractive source for the same reason vietnam and india are today. Large, young, disciplined, literate and organized population with low wages and an accomodating political elite.
All currencies are manipulated. It's a meaningless statement.
> All currencies are manipulated. It's a meaningless statement.
That's probably (mostly) true today, but it wasn't always the case and it doesn't have to be that way. More importantly, just because most countries manipulate their currencies doesn't mean its meaningless to take issue with the practice or to notice when one country does it more aggressively than others.
Nobody does it more aggressively or less aggressively. It's done to an "agreed" upon level. Whether it is china, india, eu, japan, etc, every country pretty much sets the range. It's not like it is a secret. It's out in the open. Just like interest rates.
Okay, those are good points, but I don't think the statement is meaningless. China, as I think most understand, deliberately pumped RMB into the market in a manner that made its resources available to foreign markets by trading a capital account deficit for a trade surplus. It's literally the first thing discussed in the RMB wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renminbi.
Which is a completely fair play in a globalist society when you're a nation with an outstanding capital surplus. The US did this for centuries by exporting the dollar as a reserve currency, up until the gold standard ended and the value of the dollar as fiat started deteriorating.
Imperial economics 101, really. Offer stability in one hand and demand compensation with the other.
All currencies are manipulated. It's a meaningless statement.