Forbes and Xinhua both reported remarks made at the World Economic Forum yesterday by Fan Gang, director of the National Economic Research Institute at the China Reform Foundation.

From Forbes:

"The U.S. dollar is no longer - in our opinion is no longer - (seen) as a stable currency, and is devaluating all the time, and that's putting troubles all the time," Fan said, speaking in English.

"So the real issue is how to change the regime from a U.S. dollar pegging ... to a more manageable ... reference ... say Euros, yen, dollars - those kind of more diversified systems," he said.

In an unrelated development, Xinhua reported remarks from the International Symposium on the Death Penalty held last month at Xiangtan in Hunan province:

Legal experts at the conference argued that China would need to limit the use of capital punishment when it ratifies the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and that abolition was the mark of a "civilized society."

Professor Qiu Xinglong, the dean of the law faculty in Xiangtan University, Hunan Province and a leading advocate for reforming the current death penalty in China, claimed that as long as the law recognized that criminals were humans, the criminals were entitled to live and the state and the law could not deprive them of their right to life.

The Xinhua piece includes quotes from commentators both for and against the death penalty commentators.

LINKS:
Forbes on China and the US dollar
Xinhua on the dollar
Xinhua on the death penalty debate