China’s RMB Yuan Approaches Reserve Currency Status
China’s RMB Yuan is approaching reserve currency status and the freeing up of interest rates mark the culmination of Zhou Xiaochuan’s, 65 anni, long march from toiling on state farms through bitter Winters during the Cultural Revolution to steering the nation’s financial-reform push across 3 administrations.
Zhou is the longest-serving Group of 20 (G20) central bank boss, has overseen an end to the RMB Yuan’s direct peg to the USD, and championed its global use.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) governor, who works in the confines of a Communist system where the State Council calls the shots on policy decisions, has pushed for freeing up all manner of restrictions on the flow of money at home and across borders.
Last month the PBOC abolished a cap on what banks could pay on deposits, overhauling a monetary framework that disadvantaged savers and fueled decades of debt-driven investment. Now, the RMB Yuan is poised to enter the big leagues of global currencies, with International Monetary Fund staff recommending it be included in the fund’s Special Drawing Rights reserve-currency basket, alongside the USD, EUR, GBP, and JPY.
Lacking the autonomy of the Fed, and ECB, the PBOC boss has to make the case for policies to those who outrank him. President Xi Jinping signaled confidence in Zhou in Y 2013 by keeping him in the job past the typical retirement age of 65.
Zhou’s quest for a market-based interest-rate system dates to at least Y 1993, when he was co-author of a report that envisioned a central banking system using interest rates as “indirect” tools of economic control. In July 2013, he eliminated the lower limit on lending rates offered by the nation’s financial institutions, giving banks freedom to set the level themselves.
Last month’s abolition of the deposit ceiling means they can now do the same on savings rates.
The moves are part of a broader shift from a tightly regulated system where the PBOC conceived policy with quantitative outcomes in mind such as the amount of new loans extended each month, to one where liquidity is determined by the price of capital.
Zhou’s push for a freer, globalized currency with international use of the RMB Yuan swelling since the USD peg ended in Y 2005. In the midst of the Ys 2007-08 financial crisis, Zhou floated the idea of a “super-sovereign” reserve currency to reduce the world’s reliance on USDs. While that proposal fell flat, Zhou and his allies began a campaign for the RMB Yuan to join the IMF’s SDR unit.
These changes are what people should be focused on. They are very much more important than where the PMI went last month.
Winning official reserve-currency status needs approval by the IMF’s executive board, with implementation coming in late Y 2016. US Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew told Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang while attending a Group of 20 gathering Sunday that the US intends to support SDR inclusion as long as the RMB Yuan meets existing IMF criteria.
The nation’s leaders appointed Zhou in Y 2013 as a vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the country’s top political advisory body, giving him added political clout and “State-level” leader status with a higher retirement age.
“If we look back, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan stayed on the post to accomplish this mission,” Lu Feng, economics professor at Peking University, said of the RMB Yuan’s status as a global reserve currency. “He is indeed a reformer. People always look at him as someone having a reformer’s mind among the top leaders.”
Stay tuned…
HeffX-LTN
Paul Ebeling
The post China’s RMB Yuan Approaches Reserve Currency Status appeared first on Live Trading News.