The first is the 1997 Asian Crisis and the second is the Plaza Accord of 1985.
In the two years following the Plaza Accord, the exchange value of the dollar versus the yen declined by 51 percent.
After the Plaza accord between the big industrial countries in 1985, the Japanese yen rose by 80% against the dollar in three years.
The Chinese are very aware of how the Plaza Accord affected Japan back in the 1980s and do not wish to make the same mistakes.
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Those that call for the yuan to appreciate faster often cite Japan rapid-fire appreciation of the yen under the Plaza Accord in September of 1985.
Over the last 22 years, since the imposition of the Plaza Accord meant to strengthen non-dollar currencies against the greenback, the yen has risen 124%.
But by the second half of that year it became apparent that the Plaza Accord had failed in its real mission to cut down on the U.S. trade deficit.
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The fall of the dollar against the yen after the Plaza Accord of 1985 led to a surge in Japanese investment in South-East Asia, and in exports from the region.
At this historic meeting, the finance ministers of France, West Germany, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom signed the Plaza Accord in which they all agreed to depreciate the U.S. dollar in relation to the Japanese yen and German deutschemark by intervening in currency markets.
It was only after U.S. Secretary of the Treasury James A. Baker III strongarmed the finance ministers of Germany, France, Great Britain, and Japan into a hotel room in New York and produced the Plaza Accord on September 22, 1985, launching an unprecedented global market intervention to bring down the overvalued U.S. dollar, that protectionist pressures began to subside.
Following the 1985 Plaza Accord, the Bank of Japan launched an aggressive monetary policy easing to boost domestic demand.
The thinking in the Chinese capital is that Washington, in the 1985 Plaza Accord, ended Japan's bid for global dominance by engineering a fall in the greenback in relation to the yen.
After the 1985 Plaza Accord on currency, Japan's yen steeply appreciate in value.
The G20 summit in Seoul will not produce a comprehensive global agreement along the lines of the 1985 Plaza Accord.
Of course they enjoyed some advantages along the way too, not least an undervalued yen in the decades before the 1985 Plaza Accord.
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On the trade front, Reagan erred with the ill-fated Plaza Accord, along with tariffs on motorcycles among other products, but succeeded in the sense that the calls for more substantial trade barriers in Congress were deafening.
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