Trade, Exchange rates and Democracy

So I've been thinking: Should trade policy be related with democracy? Are countries who are bigger, poorer and undemocratic more likely to be protectionist? If so should we create added trade barriers to these countries, is it irrelevant or does this hypothesis not imply the need for trade barriers?

EU-China: We push them, they push back...

Here's how the much touted EU-China summit ended. So not so well... Now what's next? Do we sanction them and risk alienating them? Or do we just wait it out and alienate our electorates further. It'll be interesting to see how things process from here, but clearly there's no clear cut answer to this problem. China is too big a risk...

Wofgang Munchau on the Chinese Renmimbi Manipulation

If you are interested in what happens in the world, please read this article by the FT's Wolfgang Munchau.It summarises the economic logics underlying the discussions about Chinese monetary intervention. More importantly it argues for a forceful approach to Chinese monetary manipulation. I'm a big fan of his blog, and even if I don't always agree with him, he is always insightful, clear and fair. He mentions an article from VoxEU contributor and Centre for European Policy Studies' Director Daniel Gros, which very intelligently argues for the use of reciprocity in arguing for capital controls, which would be legal, apparently, against the much touted trade wars.I agree with these means, as it seems nothing better exists. However, I believe his analysis may be slightly myopic.

International Cooperation: China-EU Relations

So there has been a lot of interaction between EU and China, as of recently. I'll start with the following article from the Chinese Embassador to the EU, where he praises the Lisbon treaty and it's ability to increase European integration, thus endowing the EU with a new authority and consequent ability in international relations, fundamental to the EU-China foreign strategic relationship (whatever it may be...).

Then we follow with the renewed calls for Beijing to allow the renmimbi to float, which is really to say that the EU and the USA want it to appreciate.

The Chinese on the other hand want to leave it be for fear it'll create chaos, which I'm assuming they fear would be large enough to topple the single party regime.

At the same time the Chinese seem to have requests of their own, involving European countries giving up some of their IMF seats.

What does all this chatter mean?