David Lubin (Continuación)

Deputy Governor of the People's Bank of China Hu Xiaolian and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England John Cunliffe sign a memorandum of understanding on Renminbi clearing and settlement in London in 2014. Photo: Getty Images.

MundoAsia,

'Great powers,' says the Nobel-laureate economist Robert Mundell, 'have great currencies.' So where is China’s?

In the years following the 2008 financial crisis, things seemed to be looking up for the renminbi. By the middle of 2015, almost 30% of China’s trade was being settled in renminbi; Hong Kong banks were holding some RMB 1 trillion worth of yuan-denominated deposits; and there was life in the dim sum bond market, with issuance running close to the equivalent of $10 billion per month.

That year was also the year the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that the renminbi would become one of currencies that underpin its own reserve asset, the special drawing right (SDR).…  Seguir leyendo »

US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Photo: Getty Images.

InternacionalEconomía,

Chinese leaders do like their slogans, and where foreign policy is concerned there are two that have reflected Beijing’s thinking in recent years. The first is tao guang yang hui, usually rendered into English as ‘hide your light and bide your time’, which guided Chinese policy for decades from the 1980s when Deng Xiaoping first established it as a principle of caution in foreign affairs. In late 2013, though, a new slogan was coined by President Xi Jinping to define a more assertive, muscular approach to foreign policy: fen fa you wei or, as it is commonly translated, ‘strive for achievement’.…  Seguir leyendo »

People walk past the 'Belt and Road' ecological wall in Beijing during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in May. Photo: Getty Images.

MundoAsia,

One could be forgiven for having missed the fifth birthday last month of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Celebrations were notably mute, for two obvious reasons. One is the increasingly audible grumbling among recipient countries about the effects of what Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has called a 'new colonialism' — a phrase that captures the idea that the BRI has led to the accumulation of debt on receiving countries’ balance sheets to pay for projects of uncertain value, built mostly by Chinese contractors on opaque terms, allowing China’s regional influence to grow in ways that are out of proportion to the benefits that countries can expect to enjoy.…  Seguir leyendo »

Headquarters of the People's Bank of China. Photo: Getty Images.

MundoAsia,

The Chinese currency has lost more value in the past eight weeks than during any eight-week period since 1994.

That’s not saying much, mind you: the exchange rate is still a bit stronger than it was just over a year ago, and considerably stronger than it was in the 2000s. So although the renminbi has depreciated, it is difficult to say that it’s weak. There might be plenty of room for it to fall further.

The simplest way to think about China’s desire to see its currency weaken is that it is somehow part of Beijing’s armoury to meet the threats of trade and economic conflict coming out of Washington.…  Seguir leyendo »