Chris Devonshire-Ellis The RMB Position and the Mysteries of the China Unemployment Fund

Several claims have been made by China recently over the need for it to maintain the RMB position, and that any large correction of its position against the U.S. dollar would have serious impacts on rising unemployment, factory closures, and in iphone 4 earpiece the word’s of Li Ruguo, the chairman of the Import-Export Bank of China, that Western nations would have to be prepared to accept an influx of Chinese immigrants. Prices of China made goods would also, naturally rise.While an increase in the costs of Chinese goods would be absorbed by the global market (people would either trade down in product value, and manufacturers would simply move to cheaper locations to maintain low consumer prices), the Chinese government’s assertion that the appreciation of the RMB would result in unemployment problems – one so severe it would invoke economic migration of millions of Chinese – is an interesting one. What I will attempt to demonstrate in this article is whether the RMB position against the U.S. dollar would be responsible for the layoffs of thousands of workers, and whether that is an issue that should be the concern of the international business community. I will discuss the official unemployment figures, the effectiveness of China’s unemployment fund, and try and work out the efficiency of these as related to China’s funding and administration of its unemployed workers.The official figures are presented in a somewhat convoluted fashion, but Walkera Mini CP what they are saying is that according to statistical evidence, out of a total working population of 79,812,000, a total of 1,817,000 should be unemployed at any given time. However, the last official figure released for actual claimants (March 2010) showed a number of about half of this total, or 921,000 actual claimants.Such figures might under-represent the true unemployment rate because they do not consider 1. The number of people who are working part-time because there are no full-time opportunities available 2. The number screwdriver for iphone 4 of people who are no longer “economically-active” because they’ve simply given up on finding a job