Between escalating wages, moderately high rates of inflation, a housing boom driven by cheap loans to state-owned companies, and the constant drive for status that tends to characterize Chinese social life, it’s inevitable that the days of China as a cheap factory floor and outsourcing platform are not going to be with us for much longer.

While China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) and People’s Consultative Congress (CPPCC) meetings are often ignored by international media who simply cast them as “rubber stamps” for party policy, the congresses have in recent years evolved into something much more interesting – a convention of many of China’s most influential politicians, business leaders, military leaders and academics where new policy gets rolled out for the coming year-often amid quite critical discussion and flurries of weibo posts.

On December 25th, as the children of the United States were laying snug in their beds with visions of Playstations and imported toys in their heads, Japanese Premier Yoshihiko Noda was in Beijing, signing a far-reaching pact with China that promises to significantly enhance the usefulness of the yuan- at least as far as trade with Japan is concerned.