【英语财经】分析：人民币汇率下一步往何处走？ China’s dilemma: what next for the renminbi?

With August and a week of tremendous market volatility behind us, it is worth asking whether this new month will bring a return to stability and perhaps even an opportunity to get back into beaten-down emerging market assets.

That depends on a host of factors — from US interest rates to the prospect for oil prices — but a big part of the answer is the outlook for China.

And that outlook remains very risky in the opinion of Medley Global Advisors, a macro research service owned by the Financial Times.

The measures taken by the mainland authorities last week, including cuts to official interest rates and reserve ratio requirements, were a positive step. So is the news, reported by the FT, that Beijing intends to stop intervening to prop up share prices, even if it could lead to some more short-term gyrations in the equities market.

But all of this is less important right now than the currency — the tail that is wagging the dog in China.

As long as the renminbi is widely expected to depreciate further, both by international investors and Chinese citizens, capital will continue to flow out of the country. And Beijing’s attempts to restore domestic liquidity through reserve requirement ratio cuts and central bank injections are fighting a symptom rather than the underlying cause of the problem.

The People’s Bank of China is well aware of this. Hence it has been using its daily renminbi fix to guide the currency stronger again since the shock depreciation of August 11 (and the subsequent two days).

But it is hard to stuff that genie back into the bottle. At this point, depreciation expectations are pretty well entrenched — as shown by the sizeable gap between the onshore renminbi and its offshore counterpart, which is weaker because the PBoC does not control it directly.

The central bank is likely to stick to its current policy of keeping the currency stable and strong for now given this week’s military celebrations. It may even persist until after President Xi Jinping’s US visit in September to keep trade frictions at bay.

But at some point it will probably have to acknowledge that currency strength is only further tightening domestic liquidity and will choke already stuttering growth.

Meanwhile, the central bank is spending billions of its international reserves to keep the renminbi strong and it is hard to see even China, with its massive reserves, winning such a war of attrition unless the underlying economy stabilises — and there are few signs of that at present.

One way out would be for Beijing to return to a formal currency peg. That would remove depreciation expectations at a stroke, but also put paid to promises of market-based reforms, as championed, in particular, by PBoC governor Zhou Xiaochuan.

An alternative would be a proper devaluation of, say, 20 per cent, to get exports going again — rather than August’s halfhearted 3 per cent move, which seems to have been the result of a messy bureaucratic compromise.

It is hard to believe that the authorities would sanction such aggressive action, which really would trigger a currency war. Last month’s market volatility would pale in comparison.

Having said that, the Chinese leadership’s reputation for economic competence has lost much of its gloss lately. Driven into a corner and faced with a choice between turmoil at home and turmoil abroad, they would surely opt for the latter. Which is something for investors to consider before diving back into EM assets.

度过了8月以及市场剧烈波动的一周后，我们有必要问一问，新到来的9月是否将重新带来稳定、甚至带来重新投资遭受重创的新兴市场资产的机会。

这取决于很多因素，从美国的利率到油价的前景，但一个重要因素是中国的前景。

在英国《金融时报》旗下宏观研究机构Medley Global Advisors看来，中国的前景仍存在很大风险。

中国政府上周采取的举措是积极的，包括降息和降准。另外，据英国《金融时报》报道，中国计划停止支撑股价的干预举措，尽管这可能会给股市带来更多短期波动。这也是个好消息。

但目前，这些都不如人民币汇率重要，因为它关系到全局。

只要国际投资者和中国公民都普遍预期人民币将继续贬值，资金就将继续流出中国。中国通过降准和央行注资恢复国内流动性的努力是治标不治本。

中国央行很清楚这点。因此，自8月11日（以及随后的两日）令人震惊地下调汇率以来，中国央行正利用每日设定的人民币汇率中间价再次引导人民币升值。

然而，很难把妖怪收回瓶子里。目前，贬值预期相当根深蒂固，就像在岸与离岸人民币汇率之间的巨大差异所显示的那样。离岸人民币汇率较低，因为中国央行不直接控制该汇率。

鉴于本周的“9?3”大阅兵，中国央行可能会坚持当前政策，保持汇率稳定和强劲。该政策甚至可能会持续到中国国家主席习近平9月访美之后，以防止贸易摩擦。

但中国央行未来某一时刻可能不得不承认，汇率走强只会进一步收紧国内流动性，并将遏制已在不断放缓的经济增长。

与此同时，中国央行正动用巨额外汇储备保持人民币汇率强劲。除非基础经济企稳，否则即便是拥有庞大外汇储备的中国，也很难赢得这种消耗战，而目前几乎没有经济企稳的迹象。

一种解决办法是中国回到正式的“挂钩”汇率制。这将一举消除贬值预期，但同时也将终结市场化改革的承诺，而市场化改革是中国央行行长周小川尤其倡导的。

另一种方法是人民币真正贬值，比如说贬值20%，以使出口再次活跃，而不是像8月那样敷衍式的只贬值3%，后者似乎是混乱的官僚妥协的结果。

很难相信中国政府会批准如此激进的举动，因为这将真正引发一场汇率大战。相比之下，上月的市场波动就是小巫见大巫了。

话虽如此，中国领导人经济治理能力方面的声望最近已失去了不少光泽。在被逼入角落、不得不在国内动荡与国外动荡之间做出选择时，他们肯定会选择后者。这是投资者在重新冲向新兴市场资产之前要考虑的一个问题。

译者/梁艳裳