yu69_FREDERIC J. BROWNAFP via Getty Images_renminbi

Economics

中国的汇率挑战

Dec 20, 2022 Yu Yongding

发自北京——人民币的价值曾在围绕全球失衡的辩论中占据着重要地位。当年外界认为人民币被低估并敦促其升值，而中国人民银行却仍坚定维持其事实上的与美元挂钩。但近年以来中国对其货币可能过度强势的担忧已被对急剧贬值的忧虑所取代。

尽管中国一直保持着经常账户盈余，但自2015年以来的资本外流使汇率频繁面临着下行压力。根据资本外流的驱动因素，压力的来源可以分为三大类：国内经济状况的恶化、非经济因素和套利。

当2015年股市暴跌并引发数月的市场动荡，同时GDP增长失去动力时，中国人民银行推出了设定人民币对美元汇率中间价的新规则以使人民币汇率更加灵活。虽然此举本身是正确的，但却引发了人民币贬值预期的突然上升。自此资本开始流出中国——并持续到2016年底。为了支撑人民币，中国人民银行在此期间烧掉了约1万亿美元外汇储备。

To continue reading, register now.

Subscribe now for unlimited access to everything PS has to offer.

As a registered user, you can enjoy more PS content every month – for free.

Already have an account? Log in

Subscribe to PS Digital

Access every new PS commentary, our entire On Point suite of subscriber-exclusive content – including Longer Reads, Insider Interviews, Big Picture/Big Question, and Say More – and the full PS archive.

Subscribe Now

new comment has been posted. new comments have been posted.

0 Comments on this paragraph, 2 Comments on this article

vic lai Dec 21, 2022

It's said that, following the recent popping of the massive real-estate bubble in many of the country's major cities, and hence the resulting high net-debts being incurred by many local governments, real-estate companies, and home-buying Chinese people, together with her almost-3-year-old strict Covid lockdown economically-suicidal policies, China is currently at the beginning of a prolonged balance sheet (repairing) recession, rendering the country's monetary policies relatively ineffective, and her fiscal policies much more effective, in the coming years.
Unlike during the aftermath of the GFC of 2008-09, today's China can no longer act as the main propeller of global economic growth in the coming years.
---
To avoid Japan-like decades-long economic mediocrity in the future, Xi's new ruling government should no longer keep penalizing the country's "naughty" private enterprises, and the country's strict lockdown policies should further be relaxed.
Also, the PBOC can seriously consider enacting her own QE programs, by actively buying the seriously impaired financial assets of the country's commercial banks, local governments, real-estate companies, and other financial enterprises, near their face values (not at much lower market values), thereby much shortening the balance-sheet repairing processes of the affected Chinese entities and people, like what the US did after the GFC of 2008-09.
When the slates have been wiped clean, China can much more easily recover her good old high economic growth in the following years.
- vic lai Dec 21, 2022
  
  Unlike Japan's yen, China's yuan hasn't depreciated much vis-a-vis the US dollar in the latest US-dollar-strengthening cycle, because
  (i) China's monetary authority has kept its stable-yuan-exchange-rate policy relatively intact in the recent past,
  (ii) given China's relatively strict capital (outflow) control, unregulated global carry trades have not been able to much bid down the exchange value of the yuan in the global FX markets,
  (iii) no new-money-printing QE programs have so far been enacted by China's central bank, the PBOC, and the country's money supply has still been growing relatively slowly in the recent past,
  (iv) imported inflation has been much more suppressed in China than in Japan (and in Germany and Britain), because China's relatively poor energy-producing western provinces have been sacrificing themselves by producing and transporting very cheap coals and other energies to the rather rich manufacturing and exporting eastern coastal provinces of China, and the industrial electricity and coal prices have been strictly regulated by the Chinese authority, thereby maintaining the globally competitive exporting power of the country during the global energy crises caused by the Ukraine war in Europe, which in turn also helped mitigate the ongoing global inflationary pressure.
  The same can't be said in Europe, where Norway for example has just been making a big fortune by exporting rather expensive energies to many of the EU countries in the same continent.
  That's why recently the Chinese authority was asking the eastern rich provinces to reciprocate and to help the poorer western provinces, through more tax-financed fiscal transfer payments from the East back to the West.
  And so, the persistent lack of a formal Fiscal Union in the EU countries (or in the EEA) has much aggravated the income and wealth inequalities, the average living standard, and the people's well-being in the European continent.
  ---
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.

https://prosyn.org/RwPxkdozh

中国的汇率挑战

Subscribe to PS Digital

China’s Fiscal Challenges

New Comment

Contact us

Log in/Register

中国的汇率挑战

Subscribe to PS Digital

Edit Newsletter Preferences

Set up Notification