Xi Wants Strong Yuan in Push to Make China a 'Financial Power'

The two poles of tension around your currency reverberate around the world. Sure, have a "strong" currency. Your exports are now often wildly expensive. But people love playing games in your currency, hedging in your currency, transacting in your currency. They just don't always like buying things at unit prices in your currency.

Rubles were for a long time, worth a lot more than the pound. Didn't mean people wanted to trade in roubles, and a lot of Russian trade was barter to avoid the currency shennanigans. I mean back to Tsarist days, a rouble was worth a LOT of gold.

So have a weaker currency. You can export shitloads of goods and services but you have to cover the pain of dealing with forex, on the other hand your factories and mines are busy. You can't buy as much crap overseas, but if you are the factory for the world, it's not such a bum deal. Anyway your diaspora loves aunty and will send baby formula home in bulk for you, and dropship in reverse all those cool western toys.

Xi needs to decide what he really wants. Because what his people want is consumer goods, a good house, some certainty in the future around their declining years and a lack of political tension.

PS, wars are sometimes counterfactual to currency strength. If you're willing to peg your currency you can have a strong currency and bomb the living bejesus out of neighbours. And, you can still make those bombs if you have a weak currency. So this doesn't have to affect your military posture.

"it depends"

[not an economist. please, roll in here and correct me]