"Several analysts have argued that the renminbi remains undervalued by 15 to 25 percent." [15 to 25 percent]
The 15-25% undervaluation estimate directly quantifies the currency distortion mechanism the signal claims is sustaining export dominance beyond wage-cost competitiveness, and the article links it empirically to China's global low-skill export share trajectory.
Reasoning from this article
The article notes that IMF and Fed research finds Chinese subsidies concentrated in high-tech sectors, not labor-intensive ones — yet dominance in apparel, footwear, and toys persists despite wages now 4-5x those of Bangladesh and India. This leaves currency manipulation as the most plausible residual explanation. The mechanism generalizes: any large economy with managed exchange rates can sustain export dominance in sectors where it has nominally lost comparative advantage, making currency policy a more powerful and harder-to-counter tool than sector-specific industrial policy.