【英语财经】人民币国际化进程因何受限？ The institutional limits to the internationalisation of the RMB

The recent inclusion of the renminbi in the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights is a major victory for the People’s Bank of China, which for years has claimed that the Chinese currency deserves to be in the club of top reserve currencies.

It is also a victory for the Europeans, who after the global financial crisis departed from the tough line advocated by the US, arguing that the RMB should be included in the SDR even though China applies controls on its capital account and intervenes massively in the exchange rate. The view in Berlin, Paris and London is that China has implemented a number of liberalising reforms over the past years, which should be rewarded and further encouraged.

Although the internationalisation of the RMB has developed rapidly since 2009, the fact is that there are a number of institutional factors – the market turmoil at the beginning of 2016 is a symptom of this – that hinder its ascendancy. This is reflected in its limited usage compared to the weight of the Chinese economy, the second largest in the world, and the first in purchasing power parity terms.

While around 70 central banks have started to hold RMBs in their balance sheets, the RMB represents only 1 per cent of global reserve assets. This makes it the seventh reserve currency, behind the Canadian and Australian dollars. Furthermore, the RMB ranks eighth in terms of international bond issuance and ninth in global currency trading. This means that on the financial track the use of the RMB is still very limited.

The numbers on the trade track are more encouraging. According to Swift, the RMB has overtaken the yen as the fourth most used currency in international payments. This leads Standard Chartered Bank to believe that roughly 25 per cent of China’s trade is settled in RMB. But even here one should treat the figures with caution. Near 80 per cent of China’s trade settled in RMB is done with Hong Kong and, perhaps more importantly, in most international trade contracts the RMB is the medium of exchange and not the unit of account. In other words, the Chinese currency is the means of payment, while the dollar remains the invoice currency, which is much more important because that is where the exchange rate risk lies.

What explains this limited use of the RMB? There are three factors that determine the successful internationalisation of a currency: 1) Confidence in the economic and political system; 2) well-developed and open financial markets; and 3) broad transactional networks.

There is no doubt that China excels in the third one. It has eclipsed the US as the world’s largest trading nation. Its immense gravitational pull is especially to be seen in East Asia. As a consequence, the Chinese currency has replaced the US dollar as the main anchor currency for a number of central banks in the region.

However, in the other two factors, China underperforms. Because of its state-led capitalism, based on financial repression, in which state-owned banks provide mainly credit to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), its financial markets are still underdeveloped. Bank credit to the private sector is equal to 128 per cent of GDP. In the US it is only 48 per cent. The Chinese bond market, by contrast, is the equivalent of 41 per cent of GDP, while in the US it is 243 per cent. The same can be said about the stock market, which in the US represents 118 per cent of GDP, and only 44 per cent in China.

The immaturity of the Chinese stock market can be observed in its volatility, which reached unprecedented levels in the first trading sessions of 2016. The average annual turnover of share ownership is 293 per cent, compared with 188 per cent in the US; if we exclude the non-tradable shares of many SOEs the turnover reaches 341 per cent. The general perception is that the Chinese stock market is a huge casino, where insider trading is rampant.

This leads to the first and perhaps most important factor: confidence. For a currency to be highly internationalised, the issuing country must not only have a credible central bank and deep, broad and liquid financial markets, in which securities can be bought and sold with low transaction costs, which necessarily implies an open capital account and full convertibility. It must also have a stable and transparent political and legal framework.

China does not fulfil these requirements (rule by law is not the same as rule of law) and as long as this is the case, the use of the RMB as a reserve currency will be limited. Over the past 200 years the main reserve currencies have been issued by economies that have liberal features. This is valid for the United Kingdom, the US and the eurozone, which currently issues the second most used currency.

While the global financial crisis has undermined confidence in unfettered financial markets, most international investors remain liberal-minded and this means that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will need to institutionally transform the role of the state from the main actor to the main regulator of the financial system if its wants to internationalize further the RMB.

As Robert Mundell once said, “great countries have great currencies”. China definitely deserves to have a great currency. But this comes at a price. The CCP would need to give up control of the credit system and, so far, western hopes notwithstanding, there is no indication that this will happen any time soon.

Miguel Otero-Iglesias is senior analyst at Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid and author of “The Euro, the Dollar and the Global Financial Crisis: Currency Challenges seen from Emerging Markets”.

对于中国央行来说，前不久人民币被纳入国际货币基金组织(IMF)特别提款权(SDR)是一场重大胜利。数年来，中国央行一直声称人民币应当被纳入这个顶级储备货币俱乐部。

对欧洲人来说也是一场胜利。在全球金融危机后，他们离开了美国所倡导的强硬路线，认为人民币应该被纳入SDR，尽管中国对其资本账户施加管控、并且大举干预汇率。德国、法国和英国认为，近年来中国实施了诸多自由化改革，应该予以奖励并进一步鼓励其推行改革。

尽管自2009年以来人民币国际化迅速发展，但是一些制度因素——2016年初的市场动荡就是表现症状——却阻碍着人民币地位的进一步上升。这反映在，与中国作为全球第二大经济体、按购买力平价计算的第一大经济体的地位相比，人民币的使用有限。

尽管全球约有70家央行已经开始在资产负债表中持有人民币，但是人民币占全球储备资产的比重仅为1%。这使得人民币成为第七大储备货币，位于加拿大元和澳大利亚元之后。此外，人民币在全球债券发行量和外汇交易量中分别排第八和第九位。这意味着人民币在金融领域的使用仍然非常有限。

在贸易领域的数据较令人振奋。据环球银行金融电信协会(SWIFT)数据显示，人民币已取代日元成为全球第四大国际支付货币。这使得渣打银行(Standard Chartered Bank)认为中国约25%的贸易是以人民币结算的。但即使对这一数据也应谨慎看待。中国内地以人民币结算的贸易近80%是与香港进行的，或许更重要的是，人民币在绝大多数国际贸易合约中都是交换媒介而非记账单位。换句话说，人民币是支付手段，而美元仍然是计价货币。后者更重要，因为这正是汇率风险所在。

如何解释人民币使用有限的现状？一种货币成功实现国际化有三个决定因素：1）外界对其经济和政治体系的信心；2）成熟且开放的金融市场；3）广阔的贸易网。

毫无疑问，中国在第三点上具有优势。它已经超越美国，成为全球第一大贸易国。中国的巨大引力在东亚地区格外明显。因此，人民币取代美元成为该地区多家央行的主要储备货币。

然而，在另外两个因素上，中国表现欠佳。由于中国是基于金融压制的政府主导型资本主义，国有银行主要为国企提供信贷，因此其金融市场仍然不够发达。银行向私营部门提供的信贷相当于国内生产总值(GDP)的128%。在美国，该数字仅为48%。相比之下，中国债券市场的规模仅相当于GDP的41%，而美国为243%。同样的情况也体现在股市上，美国股市规模相当于GDP的118%，而中国仅为44%。

从中国股市的波动性可以看出它的不成熟。在2016年开年的多个交易日中，这种波动性达到了前所未有的水平。中国股市平均年换手率达到293%，相比之下美国为188%。如果剔除很多国企的非流通股份，换手率达到341%。普遍看法是，中国股市是大赌场，内幕交易猖獗。

这影响了第一个、或许也是最重要的因素：信心。为了实现货币的高度国际化，发行国不仅要有信誉良好的央行，以及深度、全面、流动性好的金融市场，在其中证券可以以很低的交易成本买卖（这必然意味着开放的资本账户和货币的完全可兑换）；还必须拥有稳定、透明的政治和法律框架。

中国目前没有达到这些要求（法制不意味着法治），只要这种情况依旧，人民币作为储备货币的使用就是有限的。过去200年，主要储备货币一直是由自由化的经济体发行。英国、美国和欧元区均是如此。欧元目前是全球使用第二广的货币。

尽管全球金融危机削弱了人们对不受约束的金融市场的信心，绝大多数国际投资者仍然具有自由化思维。这意味着，如果中共希望进一步推动人民币国际化，它必须从制度上转变政府的角色，从金融体系的主角转变为主要监管者。

正如罗伯特?蒙代尔(Robert Mundell)曾说的那样，“强大的国家拥有强大的货币”。中国当然配得上强大的货币。但是，这需要代价。中共需要放弃对信贷系统的控制。不过，尽管西方对此寄予希望，迄今还没有迹象表明这会很快发生。

本文作者为位于马德里的埃坎诺皇家学院(Real Instituto Elcano)的高级分析师，著有《欧元、美元和全球金融危机：从新兴市场看货币挑战》(The Euro, the Dollar and the Global Financial Crisis: Currency Challenges seen from Emerging Markets)。



译者/马柯斯