The costs of a chronically weak yen just grew by US$18 trillion as China’s economy, Asia’s biggest, may be joining the race to the bottom. It’s still unclear if the drop in the Chinese exchange rate that began Friday is the start of a trend that would surely rock global markets or just a fluke. But the correlation with the Japanese yen’s decline is hard to ignore. To be sure, President Xi Jinping’s team threw markets a lifeline on Monday. The People’s Bank of China signaled that the yuan might not be about to plunge with a slightly higher-than-expected daily reference rate of 7.0996 per dollar. That’s the biggest ... (full story)