3月15日，复旦大学经济学院院长、中国社会主义市场经济研究中心主任张军教授在Project Syndicate官网上发表文章：Trump’s Imaginary Enemy。
报业辛迪加（Project Syndicate）被称为“世界上最具智慧的专栏”，作者来自全球顶级经济学者、诺奖得主、政界领袖，主题包括全球政治、经济、科学与文化塑造者的观点，为全球读者提供来自全球最高端的原创文章、最具深度的评论，为解读“变动中的世界”提供帮助。
以下为文章全文：
Last month, China commemorated the 20th
anniversary of the death of Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of the economic
reform and opening up that catapulted the country to the top rungs of the
global economic ladder. The anniversary comes at a time when economic openness
is under threat, as the United States is now being led by a president who
believes that the way to “make America great again” is to close it off from the
world.
In particular, Donald Trump’s
administration is posturing for a stricter approach to China, which he claims
has been “raping” the US with its trade policies, including by keeping the
renminbi’s value artificially low. Whatever concrete steps Trump takes, it
seems clear that US policy will be economically tougher on China in the coming
years, potentially even triggering a trade war. But, as a closer look at China’s
financial policy stance shows, China is not America’s foe.
Just a few months ago, China was confronted
with the urgent challenge of preventing the continued depreciation of the
renminbi and cooling down an overheating real-estate market. This would be no
easy feat, not least because the authorities’ efforts to stem the renminbi’s
decline were rapidly shrinking China’s foreign-exchange reserves.
The situation was so grim that some
international investors and economists suggested that the government would have
to give up on managing housing prices and focus, instead, on propping up the
exchange rate, as Japan, Russia, and South Asian economies had done. China,
they argued, could not allow its hard-earned foreign-exchange reserves to slip
away.
But, after partly decoupling the renminbi
from the dollar in August 2015, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) tried hard
not to intervene to boost the renminbi’s value. As China’s economic growth
continued to decline and America’s continued to recover, the renminbi’s
exchange rate continued to fall.
Some observers might have wondered whether
the PBOC purposely allowed the depreciation to boost China’s trade
competitiveness in advance of a potential victory by Trump in the US election –
a result that many assumed would weaken the US dollar. Perhaps it did. But it
did not actively devalue the renminbi.
When Trump’s election as US president
defied expectations and made the already-strong dollar rise further,
depreciation pressure on the renminbi intensified. By the end of last year, the
renminbi had depreciated by around 15% against the dollar from the summer of
2015, and rapidly rising expectations of further depreciation were driving more
investors to take their capital out of China.
The PBOC had to take stronger action to
contain the renminbi’s decline. To stabilize exchange-rate expectations, it
imposed tighter restrictions on short-term capital outflows. At the same time,
it took its previous efforts to decouple the renminbi from the dollar – a shift
from a fixed median-price system to a market-based exchange-rate package – a
step further, adding 11 currencies to the renminbi’s reference currency basket.
With that, China’s exchange-rate storm subsided, and a two-way fluctuation
range for the renminbi-dollar exchange rate was established, an important step
toward a market-based exchange rate regime.
The PBOC took these steps before Trump’s
January inauguration. Given Trump’s accusations of currency manipulation by
China, that was good timing, regardless of the fact that the PBOC’s
intervention was aimed at strengthening, not weakening, the renminbi. Enduring
restrictions on short-term capital outflows, however, could still become a
target, though such criticism, too, would be unwarranted.
China’s regulation of cross-border capital
flows has long been a contentious subject. A few years ago, most economists
recommended that China liberalize the capital account, thereby eliminating a
key institutional barrier to the establishment of Shanghai as an international
financial center and of the renminbi as an international reserve currency.
But, according to respected economists like
Justin Yifu Lin and Yu Yongding, the full liberalization of China’s capital
account would be highly risky for China. They also point out that there is
little evidence backing claims that free cross-border capital flows are necessary
for continued economic development.
As recent experience shows, China’s use of
adjustable quotas for qualified foreign and domestic institutional investors to
manage short-term cross-border capital flows remains a valuable tactic for
protecting its exchange rate and foreign-exchange reserves. As a country with
considerable savings and an underdeveloped financial market, China knows that
it must be careful.
To be sure, when China’s economic situation
has called for it, the authorities have taken steps to reduce restrictions on
capital flows. Some 20 years ago, China began to allow – even encourage –
current-account liberalization, in order to attract inflows of foreign direct
investment into its manufacturing sector and boost exports and economic growth.
But it was not until 2008 that Chinese policymakers – seeking to offset the
upward pressure that high capital inflows were placing on the renminbi –
allowed local enterprises to invest abroad. And even then, such investments
could be made only in specific circumstances.
Similarly, in 2013, China established a
pilot free-trade zone in Shanghai, to explore approaches to facilitating
short-term capital flows and to quiet demands for financial liberalization from
the US and the International Monetary Fund. But, in order to mitigate possible
financial risks, China continued to develop its regulatory framework for
capital-account convertibility.
China also initiated in 2013 its “one belt,
one road” initiative, a massive undertaking that will establish the physical
and institutional structure for closer trade and investment relations with
countries in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, thereby accelerating the
internationalization of the renminbi. At that time, overseas investments and
acquisitions by Chinese enterprises were being strongly encouraged, in order to
provide an outlet – something like the US Marshall Plan for the reconstruction
of post-war Europe – for the excess capital and production capacity that had
emerged following the 2008 global financial crisis.
Deng used to tell Chinese officials that,
when faced with new challenges, one should “stay calm, hold one’s ground, and
respond.” So far, that is what China has done, pursuing cautious financial
liberalization according to its own needs and logic. Whatever Trump says, that
does not make China an enemy of America.
