中国的货币创造性地扩展以吸引投资

Call it a new kind of secret sauce or the McMagic of high finance, but when fast-food enterprise McDonald’s Corp. sought capital for new eateries in mainland China, it came up with an ingenious plan, supported by the Chinese government, to sell outside bonds denominated in the Chinese renminbi — a currency not convertible on international markets — then remit the proceeds directly into China.

To be sure, the innovative currency loop is a far cry from true convertibility of the renminbi (translation: “the people’s currency”), much less immediate competition to the dollar or euro as a global tender. But the deal signifies broad ambitions by China on the world stage and the willingness of China’s monetary policymakers to be creative in making attractive investments happen.

In the case of the fast-food vendor, McDonald’s wanted to open 175 new outlets, but it did not have the necessary capital in renminbi, or yuan, the individual currency unit. So the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which oversees commercial exchange involving the renminbi, allowed the Oak Brook, Illinois, company to raise money in Hong Kong by selling renminbi-denominated bonds to international investors.

In addition to offering new options with its currency, China hopes the action will accelerate the process of turning Hong Kong, the former British possession, into its primary offshore currency trade settlement center. “China is one step closer to allowing foreign companies to have a full range of domestic capital-raising options,” says Hu Yifan, Hong Kong–based chief economist of Beijing-based Citic Securities Co., China’s largest brokerage firm.

自麦当劳在8月19日的交易以来，其他外国公司在香港发布了人民币计价债务（此类文书以非正式的债券为非正式的债券，以纪念当地美食）。10月21日，菲律宾亚洲开发银行的马尼拉筹集了112亿元（1.8亿美元）的点心，一个十年的票据，优惠率为2.85％。债券严重超额认购，主要由亚洲和欧洲投资者抢购，渴望掌握中国第一个离岸人民币投资产品。11月24日，基于U.S.的毛毛虫在其中国企业的两年点心注释中提高了10亿元人民币。12月，国际金融公司，世界银行集团的一部分，试图提高1亿元人民币味道点心。“我们计划使用该收益，”国际金融公司副总裁兼财务主管Nina Shapiro说，“投资中国民营企业。”还有更多人民币优惠在临时。

最近在北京采取了几个步骤以使货币政策适应世界兴趣的几个步骤，专门允许香港银行通过销售债券发行元，香港存款人通过转化为20,000款袁一天，香港注册公司每天将外币转化为元，甚至以元价代替美元作为大陆销售的商品或服务的付款。

With 217 billion yuan on deposit by the end of October, up from 63 billion yuan at the end of 2009, according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Hong Kong has taken substantial steps toward becoming China’s offshore RMB trade settlement center. That said, Hong Kong’s pool of offshore yuan liquidity pales in comparison with China’s 60 trillion yuan on deposit. Nevertheless, the direction is clear: Offshore yuan liquidity will rise rapidly in the years ahead, with Hong Kong as the main offshore trading hub.

Since 2008, China has negotiated currency swap agreements with trading partners from Southeast Asia to Latin America, primarily emerging nations. “Demand for the renminbi as a trade settlement currency lies in emerging, not developed, economies,” says Qu Hongbin, Hong Kong–based chief China economist at HSBC Holdings. Emerging markets account for about 55 percent of China’s total trade, compared with 47 percent ten years ago. “We anticipate an increasingly rapid rise of this share,” he asserts.

In addition, China also has eased its domestic currency controls, allowing some multinationals to repatriate a portion of profits and foreign institutional investors to convert and repatriate portions of the equity instruments they hold.

China is on track to free or nearly unrestricted convertibility of the RMB as well as a more liberalized managed floating exchange rate by 2020, says Citic’s Hu. “I expect no capital control for the trade account by 2020,” she explains. “There should be no daily RMB exchange limit by that time. The Chinese government has made it clear it plans to make Shanghai an international finance center by 2020, and to do so it must make the RMB largely convertible by then.”

Only a few limits may remain after 2020, says Hu, who predicts that there still will be a minimum stay requirement for capital raised in China for outflow of dividends. Currently, the currency is allowed to rise or fall by 0.5 percent daily against the dollar. “The central bank will intervene if it thinks the market is too volatile,” she adds.

Those who closely watch China’s experiment say many of the mechanisms are in place for the eventual rise of the RMB as a global reserve currency, predicting that as soon as a decade from now the Chinese currency may begin to rival the greenback in global markets.

胡锦涛说,中国的战略仍然在发展。“人民币internationalization is a direction, but there is no clear step, pace, phase planned, as far as I know,” explains the former World Bank consultant, who maintains close ties to senior officials at China’s central bank. “It probably follows China’s strategy of ‘crossing the river by touching the stones’ — that is, experiment and observe, then experiment again and observe, and so on until the river is crossed.”

Qu of HSBC, however, describes China as having touched three specific stones in its journey to cross the river: one, making the yuan a global trade settlement currency; two, allowing its broad use in international capital markets; and three, the biggest leap of all, allowing it to be converted as an international reserve currency.

跨览会可能需要的时间超过预期，警告Kwok在凤凰上，这是一个基于东京的投资组合经理，他在尼克科资产管理公司的大中华区监督5亿美元投资“政府知道其他人采取货币时有很多好处，他说的国际声望，“他说。“但与此同时，他们意识到有巨大的成本，”即中国政府和人民将失去人民币的控制权。“我认为中国政府最害怕失去控制，”他补充道。“如果他们国际化货币和自由化，那么他们可能面临非常挥发的资本流出。总有风险。“

经济波动对政治稳定产生了直接影响，中国政府在商务部的北京证券律师和前官员中讨厌任何一种波动性。“自由敞篷车人民币可能导致资本飞行或进入热门的潮汐，”他解释道。“而中国政府是害怕这个的。”不过，北京的官员仍决心国际化人民币，指数表示，他们正在努力建立监管框架，以管理中国货币兑换机制在未来几年自由化时会出现的波动。

China’s regulators foremost need to gain experience in managing a freely convertible currency, notes Murtaza Syed, the International Monetary Fund’s deputy chief representative in Beijing. “China is ready in terms of economic size to have a global currency, but its institutions are not yet ready,” Syed said recently at a conference in Beijing. Even if partial convertibility were achieved in the coming years, that certainly would signal the end of an era in China, which kept the yuan pegged to the U.S. dollar and strictly controlled capital flow for decades. In the early decades of the revolution, a time when the nation operated as a centrally planned economy, conducting little trade with Western nations, China pegged the yuan at 2.47 to the dollar. As China reformed economically and opened up to foreign investors, the Chinese government allowed rapid depreciation, pegging the yuan at 8.28 to the dollar from 1994 to mid-2005, thereby accelerating the nation’s growth to become the world’s largest producer of labor-intensive manufactured goods. In that decade, China vaulted from the seventh-largest economy in the world to fourth-largest, according to the World Development Indicators database. In 2010, China eased past Japan to become the second-largest economy.

It was under U.S. pressure that China delinked the yuan from the dollar in 2005 and allowed for steady appreciation against a basket of currencies. When the global financial crisis intensified in mid-2008, China repegged the yuan at 6.83 to the dollar. It didn’t allow the currency to appreciate again until June 2010, ahead of the Group of 20 summit in Toronto, when, again under U.S. pressure, China’s central bank announced that it would allow for faster appreciation. The yuan currently is trading at about 6.66 to the dollar.

元,其升值的步伐key sore spot in U.S.-China trade relations. The American Congress, finding in China a convenient scapegoat for U.S. economic woes, has been tinkering with imposing tariffs on Chinese imports. In November, U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Chinese President Hu Jintao to push the currency toward full convertibility, a point he has repeatedly made with Hu.

Even as the world is pushing China to revalue, many in the West seem to have a short memory, observes Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy and chief economist at Sydney-based AMP Capital Investors, one of Australia’s largest asset managers, with A$97 billion ($95 billion) under management.

“America didn’t let its currency float until 1971, when former U.S. President Nixon ended the gold standard for the U.S. dollar,” Oliver says. “Australia didn’t let its currency float until 1983 [the Australian dollar was effectively fixed to the British pound and later the U.S. dollar, until then]. Both nations floated their currencies when their per capita incomes were far higher than China’s. The level of development in Western countries was far more advanced than what it is in China today.”

China’s per capita gross domestic product in 2009 was $3,743 — the 87th highest in the world, according to the World Bank — while the U.S. had a per capita GDP of $46,436, the sixth highest. Back in 1971 the U.S. had a per capita GDP of $5,361, No. 1 among major nations in the world, while China had a per capita GDP of $117, among the poorest in the world, with a rank of 121.

“So you can understand why Chinese are reluctant to accept free markets,” Oliver adds. “A lot of these countries that are lecturing China on having a fixed exchange rate didn’t float their currencies until a few decades ago because they themselves didn’t trust the gyrations in the exchange markets. It comes down to politics.”

Politics can work both ways. Indeed, the executive board of the International Monetary Fund recently approved a plan to increase China’s voting stake to third, behind those of the U.S. and Japan, in recognition of China’s rising geopolitical importance.

“这一历史性的协议是最基本的governance overhaul in the fund’s 65-year history and the biggest-ever shift of influence in favor of emerging-markets and developing countries to recognize their growing role in the global economy,” said IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn at a news conference in early November. Under the IMF system, 6 percent of IMF voting shares would be transferred to “dynamic” emerging-markets countries from industrial economies. The move would vault China over France, the U.K. and Germany, into the third spot. It would also lift other large emerging powers, including India and Brazil, into the top ten of the 187-member institution.

国际货币基金组织成员国将对改革进行投票，改革通过需要85%的支持率。一些国家也需要立法批准，包括美国。不过，改革通过的可能性很大。

“We see the rise of the ‘redback,’” says HSBC chief China economist Qu. “If there is to be a rival to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency in the 21st century, it surely must be the Chinese renminbi.” China recently surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, and it may pass the U.S. in the next 20 years. “We may be on the verge of a financial revolution of truly epic proportions,” he adds.

But until that epic time, compa nies that want to get quick clearance from China’s foreign exchange administration should avoid projects in real estate and steel — categories in which authorities are wary of hot money chasing speculation —and investment in restricted areas such as China’s defense contractors, says Derek Sulger, a founding partner at Shanghai-based Lunar Capital Management, a private equity firm that has $225 million in assets under management. “There’s no problem in getting approval to remit into China for businesses classified as ‘allowed’ or ‘encouraged,’” he adds, noting that his firm is managing investments in eight Chinese private companies. “The process takes 30 to 90 days and is generally straightforward.”

另一种以人民币计价的债券称为熊猫债券，允许外国发行人在内地融资。到目前为止，北京的领导人只允许亚行和国际金融公司这两家外国公司发行熊猫。自2005年以来，国际金融公司已发行了两种债券，共募集资金20亿元；第一种债券的期限为10年，年票面利率为3.4%；第二种债券的期限为7年，收益率为3.2%。亚行还通过两次债券发行募集资金20亿元，第一次是2005年，期限为10年，年票面利率为3.34%；第二次是2009年，期限为10年，年票面利率为4.2%。

“我们完全打算扩大熊猫债券实验，以外的多边发展机构，”中国央行人周小川11月16日在北京的一个机构投资者会议上。亚博赞助欧冠

For now dim sum seems a quicker bet. Why? China wants Hong Kong to prosper as China’s offshore RMB trade settlement center, says Sundeep Bhandari, regional head of global markets in northeast Asia at Standard Chartered. “Chinese companies seeking public listings strengthened Hong Kong dramatically in the 1990s,” he notes. “RMB bond sales could have a similar effect in the years ahead as many foreign companies hoping to expand in China will seek to raise such bonds in Hong Kong.”

公司已经推动了麦当劳模型。总部位于香港对冲基金收入合作伙伴资产管理（HK）主席Emil Nguy表示，他正在与Deutsche银行和渣打银行的银行合作，筹集高达10亿美元用于仅在人民币计价的产品中投资的基金。“我们认为对这一基金的需求绝对是高度的，”诺伊说，他针对全球机构投资者和高净值的个人。亚博赞助欧冠

Shanghai, Hong Kong’s main competition for foreign investment, has its own RMB plans. Hu Ruyin, head of research at the Shanghai exchange, confirms that his bourse is planning to allow foreign companies to list foreign shares in the near future. “China is aiming to be an economic giant,” Hu says. “To be an economic giant, China must also be a financial giant. To be a financial giant, China must have open capital markets that are integrated with the world.”

Also on the drawing board: provisions to allow foreign branches of Chinese financial institutions to issue RMB-denominated offshore investment products. Bank of China International Holdings, China Construction Bank Corp. and Citic Securities International Co. may be permitted to offer everything from structured products to index-linked investment funds. “It will be another milestone in the process of RMB internationalization,” says Citic Securities’ Hu.

“Sniffing the potential for business, banks — especially multinational ones — have been eager to get involved in renminbi cross-border trade,” says HSBC’s Qu, who predicts that at least half of China’s trade flows with emerging-markets countries could be settled in renminbi within a few years, up from less than 3 percent now.

Further, predicts Qu, nearly one third of China’s total trade could be settled in renminbi by 2015.

“The renminbi trade settlement scheme is triggering a chain reaction in China’s capital markets,” Qu wrote in his landmark November report, “The Rise of the Redback.” As he explained: “Rising demand for the renminbi overseas is smoothing the path for Chinese corporations to invest abroad with the renminbi. As renminbi trade revenue accumulates outside China, so too will the path be smoothed for foreign companies wishing to invest in China with the renminbi.”

毫无疑问，中国强大的经济引擎可能崩解的障碍，仍然存在障碍。

AMP经济学家奥利弗（Oliver）经常访问中国各大城市，他说：“有人说，由于投机性的房地产价格高企，中国经济在大量坏账中崩溃。”。“我看不到即将崩溃的迹象。我看到了房价上涨的迹象，但我没有看到像美国那样的有毒债务。大多数中国人为自己的房产支付了巨额首付。没有供过于求，没有像中国这样的人口。我认为中国的故事会继续下去。”

Oliver recounts his visits to a recently opened shopping center in Beijing. Two years ago the shops were empty, while today “every shop has two to three people in it.”

Not surprisingly, there’s no dollar menu at the outlets with the Golden Arches. At this home of the Big Mac, the yuan is king.