China blasted U.S. economic policy yesterday (Thursday) at the Strategic Economic Dialogue, a two-day summit engineered to address long-term issues between the two countries. Chinese authorities have grown more fervent, and more explicit, with their criticism of the U.S. financial system over the past year, evidence of a shift in the balance of power between the nations.

Fears are growing in China that inflation may start to affect more than just food prices. Consumer prices in China rose 8.5% in April from a year earlier.

“Resurgent inflation, everyone agrees, seems a global problem while a slowdown may be largely limited to the US with some spillover effect to Europe,” according to a report in India’s Financial Express newspaper.

China exported deflation for the last 15 years by stocking the shelves of retailers in the West with products made in their factories employing cheap labour and easy capital.

The Chinese are wild gamblers! We all know that! When it comes to gold, however, they seem risk averse. Gold futures were introduced on Shanghai’s Futures Exchange in January. They were only the second product – after zinc – on this new market.