China’s exchange rate regime has undergone gradual reform since the move away from a fixed exchange rate in 2005. The renminbi has become more flexible over time but is still carefully managed, and depth and liquidity in the onshore FX market is relatively low compared to other countries with de jure floating currencies. Allowing a greater role for market forces within the existing regime, and greater two-way flexibility of the exchange rate, are important steps to build on the progress already made. This should be complemented by further steps to develop the FX market, improve FX risk management, and modernize the monetary policy framework.
In less than three decades, China has grown from playing a negligible role in international trade to being one of the world's largest exporters, a substantial importer of raw materials, intermediate outputs, and other goods, and both a recipient and source of foreign investment. Not surprisingly, China's economic dynamism has generated considerable attention and concern in the United States and beyond. While some analysts have warned of the potential pitfalls of China's rise—the loss of jobs, for example—others have highlighted the benefits of new market and investment opportunities for US firms. Bringing together an expert group of contributors, China's Growing Role in World Trade undertakes an empirical investigation of the effects of China's new status. The essays collected here provide detailed analyses of the microstructure of trade, the macroeconomic implications, sector-level issues, and foreign direct investment. This volume's careful examination of micro data in light of established economic theories clarifies a number of misconceptions, disproves some conventional wisdom, and documents data patterns that enhance our understanding of China's trade and what it may mean to the rest of the world.
China’s trade patterns are evolving. While it started in light manufacturing and the assembly of more sophisticated products as part of global supply chains, China is now moving up the value chain, “onshoring” the production of higher-value-added upstream products and moving into more sophisticated downstream products as well. At the same time, with its wages rising, it has started to exit some lower-end, more labor-intensive sectors. These changes are taking place in the broader context of China’s rebalancing—away from exports and toward domestic demand, and within the latter, away from investment and toward consumption—and as a consequence, demand for some commodity imports is slowing, while consumption imports are slowly rising. The evolution of Chinese trade, investment, and consumption patterns offers opportunities and challenges to low-wage, low-income countries, including China’s neighbors in the Mekong region. Cambodia, Lao P.D.R., Myanmar, and Vietnam (the CLMV) are all open economies that are highly integrated with China. Rebalancing in China may mean less of a role for commodity exports from the region, but at the same time, the CLMV’s low labor costs suggest that manufacturing assembly for export could take off as China becomes less competitive, and as China itself demands more consumption items. Labor costs, however, are only part of the story. The CLMV will need to strengthen their infrastructure, education, governance, and trade regimes, and also run sound macro policies in order to capitalize fully on the opportunities presented by China’s transformation. With such policy efforts, the CLMV could see their trade and integration with global supply chains grow dramatically in the coming years.
The imbalance between China’s currency, the RMB, and those of other countries is widely regarded as a major problem for the world economy. There was a reform of China’s exchange rate mechanism in 2005, following which the RMB appreciated 17% against the US dollar, but many people argue that further reform is still needed. This book reports on a major research project undertaken following the 2005 reform to assess the impact on China’s economy. It considers the impact in a number of areas of the economy, including export-oriented companies, the banking industry, international trade, international capital flows, and China’s macroeconomic policy. It concludes that the policies pursued so far have been correct, and that further reform, both to the exchange rate, and to the system overall, would be desirable, but that any reform should be gradual and incremental, preserving economic stability, and integrating changes with reform in other parts of the economy.
This book examines the international political economy of China’s exchange rate policy making from theoretical and empirical perspectives. It identifies the limitations in the existing Economics studies on the RMB exchange rate and the research gap of the Comparative Political Economy (CPE) and International Political Economy (IPE) approaches to exchange rate politics. The author develops a three-level game framework for China’s exchange rate policy making based on revision and synthesis of the existing CPE and IPE approaches, which provides a richer portrait of the dynamism and complexity of China’s exchange rate policy making. The book has applied the three-level game framework to empirically analyzing China’s exchange rate policy making under the Hu-Wen administration. The book also discusses some further exploration of China’s exchange rate policy in the Xi era and comparative case study of exchange rate policy making. It is a timely and rigorous study on the role that international and domestic politics play in forging China’s exchange rate policy making in the twenty-first century.
Dollar and Yen analyzes the friction between the United States and Japan from the viewpoint of exchange rate economics. From the mid-1950s to the early 1990s, Japan grew faster than any other major industrial economy, displacing the United States in dominance of worldwide manufacturing markets. In the 1970s and 1980s, many books appeared linking the apparent decline of the United States in the world economy to unfair Japanese practices that closed the Japanese market to a wide range of foreign goods. Dollar and Yen analyzes the friction between the United States and Japan from the viewpoint of exchange rate economics. The authors argue against the prevailing view that the trade imbalance should be corrected by dollar depreciation, saying that adjustment through the exchange rate is both ineffective and costly. Stepping outside the traditional dichotomy between international trade and international finance, they link the yen's tremendous appreciation from 1971 to mid-1995 to mercantile pressure from the United States arising from trade tensions between the two countries. Although sometimes resisted by the Bank of Japan, this yen appreciation nevertheless forced unwanted deflation on the Japanese economy after 1985--resulting in two major recessions (endaka fukyos). The authors argue for relaxing commercial tensions between the two countries, and for limiting future economic downturns, by combining a commercial compact for mutual trade liberalization with a monetary accord for stabilizing the yen-dollar exchange rate.
Over the past several years, the Chinese government has maintained a policy of intervening in currency markets to limit or halt the appreciation of its currency, the renminbi (RMB) against other major currencies, especially the U.S. dollar. This policy appears to be largely intended to keep China's export industries competitive internationally and to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), which have been major factors behind China's rapid economic growth. This book provides an overview of the economic issues surrounding the current debate over China's currency policy and identifies the economic costs and benefits of China's currency policy for both China and the U.S.
China’s transformation into a dynamic private-sector-led economy and its integration into the world economy have been among the most dramatic global economic developments of recent decades. This paper provides an overview of some of the key aspects of recent developments in China’s macroeconomy and economic structure. It also surveys the main policy challenges that will need to be addressed for China to maintain sustained high growth and continued global integration.
