China’s yuan sinks, but neither its central bank nor investors are showing signs of panic
Yu Yongding says while the current depreciation in the yuan appears sharper than in the 2015-17 crisis that rattled investors, the PBOC has yet to intervene in the market the way it did then, signalling that it is serious about exchange rate reform
The latest decline has been even sharper. After more than a year of appreciation, the exchange rate began to weaken in the second quarter of 2018 – a drop that accelerated significantly in June, when the currency suffered its largest-ever monthly decline against the US dollar. So far, the renminbi has depreciated by over 8 per cent against the dollar.
Yet, in contrast to the last round of renminbi depreciation, investors aren’t panicking. The average volume of daily transactions in the foreign-exchange market amounts to only about half of the average in 2015 and 2016. With a relatively small volume of transactions, even relatively tepid excess demand for US dollars can have a significant impact on the exchange rate.
Moreover, according to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, China’s current-account and non-reserve financial-account surpluses stood at US$5.8 billion and US$18.2 billion respectively in the second quarter of 2018.
With “twin surpluses” in the second quarter and July, and with no detectable large-scale capital outflows, the renminbi’s sharp depreciation becomes more difficult to explain. One explanation is that the published balance-of-payments data, now only preliminary, will be revised.
But there is a problem with this account: the PBOC stopped its daily interventions in the foreign-exchange market about a year ago. If it restarted those interventions, presumably it would be attempting to stem the renminbi’s fall by selling foreign-exchange reserves. Yet in the second quarter of July, when the renminbi was declining rapidly, China’s foreign-exchange reserves actually increased.
That increase may simply reflect the increase in the value of China’s dollar-denominated reserve assets. But it is also possible that the PBOC has used China’s foreign-exchange reserves without updating the published balance of payments accordingly. The latter scenario would raise serious concerns, given the experience of 2015-2016.
At that time, the PBOC’s frenetic interventions drained some US$1 trillion from China’s foreign-exchange reserves in less than two years. Without that costly intervention, the renminbi may have depreciated more than it did. But the fact is that, just when everyone believed that the exchange rate would soon break the 7 yuan per US dollar threshold, it stabilised and then began to climb.
Of course, some argue that this stabilisation was an upshot of the PBOC’s efforts. But the subsequent decline in the dollar index suggests otherwise. In any case, given China’s economic fundamentals, it is difficult to imagine that the renminbi would have fallen so far as to trigger a financial crisis.
Yu Yongding, a former president of the China Society of World Economics and director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, served on the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China from 2004 to 2006. Copyright: Project Syndicate