[Alberta's Child]

I think RC is referring to the yuan/dollar peg in a historical sense. The yuan has been slowly de-linked from the dollar in recent years, but much of what goes on now in China-U.S. trade was established in prior years when the Chinese government pegged the yuan to the dollar as a strategy to ensure that Chinese labor would be cheaper than U.S. labor.

Interestingly, the Chinese government saw the folly of their ways when being linked to the U.S. dollar became a BAD thing as the dollar declined against other world currencies. When the global price of oil (priced in U.S. dollars) escalated dramatically after 2005, the Chinese found themselves paying exorbitant prices for oil simply because the dollar lost a lot of its value.

[expat_panama]

The yuan has been slowly de-linked from the dollar in recent years...

Sort of.  The Chinese gov't has tried to keep a more or less stable exchange rate with mixed results:

--but if we really want call that 'pegged' then we need to decide which peg. 

In contrast here's a list of 17 countries whose currencies have been pretty close to a dollar or a multiple for much longer time periods, and here's ten more countries that just use dollars period.  No matter what you might hear on this thread from the hyperactive set, I had nothing to do with it...