【英语财经】离岸人民币利率飙升至创纪录高位 Renminbi interest rate hits record in HK as China targets speculators

China has opened a new front in its war to curb currency depreciation by buying up renminbi offshore, foiling the burgeoning carry trade and driving the cost of borrowing to a record high.

The elevated overnight CNH Hong Kong Interbank Offer Rate (Hibor) shows how volatility in China’s currency — once a highly domestic side-show for global investors — is fanning across the globe through renminbi internationalisation. Hong Kong, the biggest offshore market, bears the brunt.

It is also a potent sign of the lengths to which China's central bank is prepared to go to support the value of offshore renminbi, known as CNH.

The overnight CNH Hibor, a daily benchmark for offshore renminbi interbank lending, hit a record-high 13.4 per cent on Monday, up from 4 per cent on Friday and the highest level since the benchmark was launched in 2013. The one-week rate surged from 7.1 per cent to 11.2 per cent.

The People’s Bank of China, acting through state-owned banks in Hong Kong, is buying up renminbi to curb CNH weakness and narrow the gap between CNH and onshore renminbi, known as CNY, analysts say.

The PBoC holds onto its purchases of CNH, thus depleting the supply of CNH available for interbank lending.

By buying CNH the PBoC also frustrates the short-term carry trade designed to profit from weakening renminbi. That trade involves borrowing CNH, exchanging the loan proceeds for foreign currency, then repaying the loan once the renminbi has fallen.

“It looks like PBoC wants to maintain a high cost of shorting CNH,” said Zhou Hao, Asia economist at Commerzbank in Singapore.

“On the other hand, it also shows that positioning is quite crowded — everyone borrows CNH to short — which means that a short covering could be very wild if it takes place.”

Renminbi deposits in Hong Kong totalled Rmb864bn ($130bn) at the end of November, a small fraction of the US dollars available to the PBoC for intervention from its $3.33tn stock of foreign exchange reserves. That means that relatively small interventions in the offshore market can have a major impact on CNH exchange and interest rates.

中国在抑制人民币贬值的战争中开辟了一条新战线——买入离岸人民币(CNH)，挫败迅猛发展的套系交易(carry trade)，并把借款成本推升至创纪录高位。

隔夜香港银行同业拆息(Hibor)的高企表明，中国汇率的波动性正如何通过人民币国际化传导至全球（人民币汇率波动的影响一度只局限在中国国内，对国际投资者而言无关紧要）。首当其冲的就是最大的离岸人民币市场香港。

这一事实还有力地表明，中国央行准备以多大的力度支撑离岸人民币的币值。

周一，作为每日离岸人民币银行同业拆息基准的Hibor，从上周五的4%跃升至13.4%的创纪录高位，为2013年推出该基准以来的最高水平。一周期Hibor由7.1%飙升至11.2%。

分析师表示，中国央行正通过在香港的国有银行买入人民币，以遏制离岸人民币走软，缩小离岸与在岸人民币(CNY)的汇率差。

中国央行持续买入离岸人民币，可供银行间拆借的离岸人民币因此大大减少。

通过买入离岸人民币，中国央行还挫败了旨在从人民币走弱中获益的短期套息交易。这种交易涉及借入离岸人民币，将所得资金兑换为外币，然后在人民币走低时偿还贷款。

“看来中国央行想把做空离岸人民币的成本维持在高位，”德国商业银行(Commerzbank)驻新加坡的亚洲经济学家周浩(Zhou Hao)表示。

“另一方面，这也表明，建仓的人相当多——每个人都在借入离岸人民币然后做空——这意味着，如果发生空头回补，可能会非常疯狂。”



去年11月，香港的人民币存款总额达到8640亿元人民币（合1300亿美元），与中国央行3.33万亿美元外汇储备中可用于干预的部分相比，这个数字很小。这意味着，离岸市场较小规模的干预，就能对离岸人民币汇率和利率产生重大影响。

译者/何黎