Word: yuan
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...Rows of massive ceramic vats command center stage on the factory floor. In them, blackened soybeans, salt and a dash of wheat flour ferment for more than a year before Tsang deems the process complete. The rich, smoky, preservative-free sauce is thicker and less salty than its competitors. Yuan's oyster sauce, which sells for $24 for 250 ml and tastes like a blast of fresh oysters, is even more impressive...
Candy may be in the pipeline for her 35-year-old company, Fu Kee Food Co. But gourmet sauces sold under the brand name Yuan's, www.i-ho-yuan.com, are what have earned Tsang a fanatical fan base from Hong Kong to Amsterdam. A 125-ml bottle of Yuan's soy sauce retails for $21 - the most expensive in the world, Tsang brags. "Why is it so expensive?" she asks. "Because it's an ancient Chinese recipe, and no one can steal it because it's in my head." (See pictures of Hong Kong...
...from her native Guangzhou in the 1950s and soon became an apprentice to one of the city's last traditional soy-sauce masters. In 1974, she struck out on her own and founded Fu Kee with the help of just two employees. The company now sells a range of Yuan's sauces in England, Australia and several Asian countries, but amazingly, the original trio of employees continues to handle all aspects of the operation. Tsang travels 90 minutes by bus to get to the factory every day, where she still concocts recipes, monitors production, manages sales and marketing and handles...
...China's motivations to boost the global standing of the yuan stem from the same concerns as its calls for a new reserve currency. Greater use of the yuan in trade would improve the competitiveness of Chinese exporters by reducing transaction costs and currency risks. By internationalizing the yuan, says HSBC's Qu, China can also begin extricating itself from the "dollar trap," in which the country, through its trade, amasses giant surpluses of dollars, which forces it to invest in dollar assets. This is why China, which holds $805 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, is the U.S.'s largest...
...some analysts say China is still far from ready to undertake the dramatic reforms necessary to allow the yuan to be a true international player. Making the yuan a freely traded currency would mean losing control over its value and flows of capital in and out of the country. This is a step Beijing's economic policymakers remain fearful of taking, since they still feel the need to protect China's developing domestic financial sector from shifts in the global economy. China sees its controlled currency as a "dam surrounding a reservoir, and the government doesn't know what would...