FORTUNE GLOBAL FORUM
The Dangers of Playing Politics With China's Currency
At the FORTUNE Global Forum in Beijing, Washington's recent tough talk on China revaluing its currency rings a little hollow.
By Justin Fox
U.S. trade and currency policy, Morgan Stanley chief economist Steve Roach declared Tuesday, is determined by politicians who don't believe in free-market economics. Roach said this as part of a panel discussion I was moderating at the Fortune Global Forum in Beijing. After he finished I turned to Li Jiange, director of the Development Research Center of the State Council of China (the Chinese government's economic think tank), and asked him if he weighed such political realities when he gave advice to Chinese leaders on exchange-rate policy.
"No, no," Li said. "Economics and politics must be kept separate匢t is not right for the U.S. Congress to politicize economic issues." Roach laughed, leaned over to his right, patted Li on the back and said, "You'll go far." But former Japanese Finance Ministry official Makoto Utsumi, sitting to Roach's left, shook his head. In dealing with the U.S. on trade and currency matters, he said, you can never ignore politics.
That certainly seems true these days. Washington right now is overrun with anti-free-trade grandstanders and China-bashers pushing China on its currency. U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer (D-New York), and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), argue that cheap Chinese imports are hurting the U.S. economy (tell that to Best Buy and Wal-Mart shoppers) and have written a bill that would slap tariffs of up to 27.5% on imports from China if the country fails to revalue its currency upward against the dollar. Most of the Senate appears to be behind their effort, and this week Treasury Secretary John Snow joined in. "China's rigid currency regime has become highly distortionary," he said Tuesday.
There is something more than a little perverse about this. China's "rigid currency regime" since 1994 has consisted of maintaining an exchange rate of 8.28 yuan (known within China as renminbi (RMB)) to the dollar. This is what's known as a "hard peg," and it's recommended by many economists as a way for developing nations to avoid destabilizing currency fluctuations. Lots of countries follow similar policies, and back in 1997 China's ability to stick to its peg in the midst of the Asian financial crisis was widely seen as crucial to stabilizing the global economy. Someday, if China keeps growing and growing and becomes what its politicians like to call a "moderately prosperous country," it should drop the peg and let its exchange rate be set by the market—and if that happened, one assumes, the RMB's value would rise against the dollar.
But such a move would require free capital flows and free capital markets, and China isn't even remotely close to being ready for that. Its banks, after years of handing out loans to industry as a matter of government policy rather than in any expectation of getting paid back, have some of the ugliest balance sheets on the planet. The country's stock exchange and other financial markets have years to go before they're ready for prime time. The experience of Latin America and Southeast Asia in the 1990s would seem to indicate that if a country allows free capital flows but doesn't have a financial system solid and transparent enough to handle them, the consequences can be dire—and not just for the countries directly involved.
So what should China do now? Clearly, it would ease relations with the U.S. if it shifted its exchange rate to, say, 6 or 7 RMB per dollar. But once China revaluDd, its currency's peg to the dollar would no longer be nearly as credible. Pressure to keep revaluing the RMB upward would be incessant. Chinese officials have already stated that they plan, eventually, to widen the "band" within which the RMB trades against the dollar—to anywhere between 7.5 and 9 RMB per dollar, for example. Another intriguing possibility—suggested by Roach and seconded by fellow panelists Utsumi (who is now CEO of the Japan Credit Rating Agency) and Kenneth Courtis, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia—would be for China to shift from pegging its currency to the dollar to pegging it to a "basket" of the dollar, the euro, the yen, and maybe one or two other currencies. Assuming the dollar resumes its long slide against the euro and yen, this would amount to an upward revaluation of the RMB vs. the dollar.
Such a move, especially if followed by other developing countries, would amount to a distinct diminishment of the dollar's role as the world's currency. But hey, the Chinese could always declare—if they were willing to acknowledge that currency policy and politics are inextricably entwined—that the U.S. Congress asked them to do it.作者: 胖胖鸭 时间: 2005-5-20 17:41
