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15 January 2016
Global Economic Perspectives: China's evolving FX policy
Our colleagues Zhiwei Zhang and Li Zeng recently offered at least a partial
explanation. We have for years emphasized that one needs to consider Asian
exports from the perspective of regional production networks. An emerging
literature demonstrates that exchange rate elasticities for exports are lower the
more integrated countries are in supply chains. Zhiwei and Li re-calculated
China's real effective exchange rate adjusting the weights for the importance
of export processing.
Chinese exports benefit from a depreciation of the
Korean won, for example, to the extent that they embody imported
components from South Korea. Recalculating the REER to incorporate such
supply chain effects, they find that China's real effective exchange rate
appreciated only 19% between 2010 and 2015 - and hardly at all for its high-
tech export sectors - which is much less than the 31% appreciation of the BIS'
conventional export-weighted REER.
Many exporters, of course, would welcome a depreciation and it may be that
as the proprietor of the final stages of many regional production networks
China's exchange rate versus the USD and EUR may be more important to
regional export growth than that of South Korea or Taiwan, for example. But
with a record trade surplus of USD602bn last year and rising we don't see a
competitiveness-based need for a weaker currency.
What do we expect from here?
That doesn't mean we don't see the currency continuing to depreciate. Zhiwei
Zhang expects the exchange rate to reach 7.01USD this year and our FX
strategist Perry Kojodjojo thinks that could come earlier rather than later. A
simple interest-rate based argument - the Fed expected to raise rates three
times this year and China expected to cut twice - suggests 7.0 is a very
plausible forecast.
Figure 9: interest rates and the tityle.
5.0%
4.0%
3.0%
2.0%
1.0%
0.0%
-1.0%
-2.0%
-3.0%
-4.0%
06 07
6.8
7.0
7.4
7.8
2Y bond spread between US & China
USD/CNY spot (Inverted. RHS)
8.2
08 09 10 II
12
13 14 15 16
Sans IlIcenibeep Piety (Pax/ Ogaw.A• Bee
But the pace of depreciation need not be as rapid as it has been. With an
evolving strategy for managing the exchange rate the authorities have both
surprised and confused investors. It is not clear what their intentions are
beyond continuing to allow more flexibility in the exchange rate. Nor should
investors expect perfect clarity - few countries that don't have fixed exchange
rates are perfectly transparent.
So investors and policymakers will both
continue to learn how this new regime works. As capital outflows hopefully
subside - and we think it's reasonable to expect they will -- there would be less
pressure on the currency to depreciate.
• See Zhang, Zhnvet and Ii Zang. "A new REER index lot AMR," Deutsche Rank Rematch. Jan. 5, 2016
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.
Adjusting for supply chain
influences, China's real
exchange rate has
appreciated far less than
conventional measures
suggest.
We still expect further RMB
deprecation, just hopefully
less rapid than in recent
weeks.
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