China is not high on the list for “day one sanctions” if one were to look at this fast-food data.

Figure 1: Log relative dollar price of Big Mac against dollar price of US Big Mac (July 2016) versus log relative per capita income in PPP terms (2016 estimates); regression fit from quadratic specification (black dots), and 90% prediction interval (gray dots). Source: Economist, World Bank World Development Indicators, and author’s calculations. Data [XLSX]

Using the methodology outlined in this post, it’s clear that by the price criterion, Russia’s currency is much more undervalued (at 50% in log terms) than China’s.

That’s the title of a newly released book written by Eswar Prasad, an authority on the Chinese economy (and international finance).

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On China, from the Report (page 4):

China has a significant bilateral trade surplus with the United States.  The country’s current account surplus fell from 3.0 percent of GDP over the full year 2015 to 2.4 percent for the four quarters through June 2016, moving below the established threshold for that criterion.  China’s intervention in foreign exchange markets has sought to prevent a rapid RMB depreciation that would have negative consequences for the Chinese and global economies.  Treasury estimates that from August 2015 through August 2016, China sold more than $570 billion in foreign currency assets to prevent more rapid RMB depreciation.  More transparency over exchange rate management and goals, and strong adherence to G‐20 commitments to refrain from competitive devaluation and not to target exchange rates for competitive purposes, will enhance the credibility of China’s exchange rate regime.  At the same time, China has a very large bilateral goods trade surplus with the United States.  This underscores the need for further implementation of reforms to rebalance the Chinese economy to household consumption.  Fiscal policy can support structural reform and provide consumption‐friendly stimulus to support demand if growth slows more than expected.

Detailed discussion of China on pages 15-18.

Here is the most recent Econbrowser post on the Chinese currency misalignment. See a more general discussion of the Penn effect at VoxEU. And on misalignment generally, see here.

Note that the Peterson Institute’s William Cline has recently taken issue with the Cheung-Chinn-Nong (2016) methodology; however, even there, based on the FEER methodology, they find neither under- nor overvaluation of the RMB.