While traveling in China, I realized that nearly everything about the way they do business, produce goods, etc. is far less efficient than in the US. Many activities that would be automated in the US require the interaction of many people; ever bought a train ticket online and had to pay a bike courier in cash to receive it?<p>If the Chinese let their currency float on the open market, my bet is that China would go from being extremely cheap for Westerners to fairly expensive. They're effectively using currency manipulation to compensate for an uncompetitive internal economic structure. (Hopefully in the long run they will be able to use what is in effect a huge foreign subsidy to fix their problems, but who knows).