China’s currency manipulation remarks by Mr. Tim Geithner hit the front pages of all major newspapers last week. So let’s take a look at how China manipulates it currency.
To be fair to China, almost every country in the world manipulates its currency. In an ideal free market world – there would be no government intervention in the currency markets. However, there is hardly any Central Bank in the world that doesn’t intervene, when its currency starts to appreciate or depreciate beyond a certain price band.
Almost every Central Bank has a certain price band for its currency in its mind, and as soon as the currency goes beyond that band, governments start intervening in one way or the other.
This government intervention can be direct or indirect.
Buying Dollars to Keep the Dollar Price High
China has been interested in keeping the Yuan (Chinese Currency) undervalued relative to the US Dollar, and the easiest way (if you can afford it) to keep the Dollar price high, and the Yuan low is to buy dollars from the open market.
A country like China, which runs a huge Trade Surplus can afford to buy dollars in the open market to keep the demand for dollars high, and push the dollar price upwards relative to the Yuan. This keeps the Yuan undervalued.
Indirect Measures
There can be indirect interventions like putting a cap on the amount of foreign assets that locals can invest abroad. For example – India allows its residents to invest only up to $50,000 in foreign assets every year.
Other indirect measures can relate to taxation laws. For example – by allowing tax free repatriation of the Great Britain Pound – the British government can help boost inflow of Pounds in the country, and influence the exchange rate.
Why Does China Wish to Undervalue the Yuan?
China’s engine of growth is exports. The lower the value of the Yuan, the better it is for China’s exporters. Basically, if 1 Dollar buys 7 Yuans, and a exporter sells a Chinese Shirt for 10 dollars – he pockets 70 yuans. But if one Dollar was worth only 5 Yuans, the exporter would only be able to pocket 50 yuans.
By How Much is the Yuan Undervalued?
It is really impossible to tell by how much the Yuan has been undervalued, but estimates suggest that this range is between 15% – 40%.
A direct consequence of keeping the local currency undervalued is inflation, and since China faced rather high inflation rates in 2008 – it did plan to let its currency appreciate in 2008 (but that was before sub-prime).
How is the US Impacted?
It can be argued that the US is flooded with cheap imports from China not because China is really cost – competitive, but because China has artificially kept its currency undervalued. If the Yuan was allowed to appreciate – Chinese imports may no longer be cheap enough to compete with American produced goods.
On the other hand, it could really be that the Chinese are cost competitive, and it is really cheaper to produce goods in China than it is to produce them in US.
The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
US Stimulus Spending
The US runs huge trade deficits, and has plans for massive stimulus spending. The deficits mean that this stimulus spending can be done by either issuing more debt to foreign countries or printing more dollars.
If Mr. Geithner’s comments continue; they may aggravate China to such an extent that it stops showing up at the Treasury Bond auctions.
If that happens, then the US will have to resort to printing currency and quantitative easing on a scale that unleashes massive inflation.
It will be interesting to see how the situation unfolds, and how Mr. Geithner deals with China’s “Manipulation” – if and when he actually takes office.
Update: Tried to get rid of the “irritating” hyphens.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi – Thanks for this article. I didn’t know anything about this – China purposefully keeping the yuan undervalued – it’s very interesting. And as an American, a little frightening.
Kim, I guess it is more of a pre-emptive tactic by the Obama administration.
The Chinese might be tempted to depreciate their currency again, and export out of this recession. And the current administration wants to nip it in the bud.
I read about this in Lee Iacocca auto biography also. This has been going on for say last 60 years. How they (chinese central bank) are able to manage it?
Well, Biplab, I guess it can’t be that hard to buy dollars when you make everything in the world!
Great post! You really laid it all out there for us. Thanks!
Thanks Hank, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I always thought the Chinese government buys and sell the Chinese currency (Yuen) to control its currency, and no doubt, I was wrong.
Thank you for clarify this for me
Thanks for explaining it in a simple and lucid manner. No matter how much I read about currencies and foreign markets I find it difficult to understand. Is there any book you guys referred to when studying MBA finance which makes it easier to understand ?
Hi,
Thanks for the article! It was very enlightening. Your misuse of hyphens was rather irritating, though. A hyphen should only be used – for example, like this – when the bit inside the hyphens can be removed completely from the sentence without removing the meaning of the sentence. And it should never be placed randomly in the middle of a sentence.
Thanx,
I have a test in ecp geo monday n my profeesor is like Buller’s. Anyone anyone…. thanx again, makes sense now. very organized
Makes perfect sense. However, I don’t see them being undervalued as an advantage. It means that their money is worth less. They have less buying power. In the short run, yes, an exchange rate change means they lose that 20 Yuans. But in reality, they should be raising their prices as their currency gains power. So they will make the same money, but we will have to pay more for it. That’s the problem with having less power in currency. When China buys from us, they are paying a lot of money for goods. When we buy from them, we get a killer deal. To me, the Chinese are the ones who are losing out by keeping their currency so low.
I guess what matters is what you’re trying to do. They just want to keep their exports going, so they don’t mind making less. We want to stop from importing so much, so we want their rate to go up. But things are still cheaper when made there, so the exchange rate change isn’t going to solve our problem. It will eliminate some exports, but not the majority of them. The US still doesn’t manufacture a lot of things and we must source out of the country to get them. The good news is clothing might stop coming from China, which should be made here!
But aren’t the Chinese using many of these dollars to purchase US debt?