Behind Yuan Move, Open Debate and Closed Doors
Two-Year Saga Included
Secret and Staged Meetings,
Weeks of Quiet Diplomacy
Last Thursday morning, several key foreign banks were asked to send a representative to the headquarters of the People's Bank of China, the central bank. The topic wasn't clear.
The meeting began around the time China's foreign-exchange market was closing for the day at 3:30 p.m. As a central-bank official began to talk, the doors were shut and locked.
"They started talking about something that wasn't very useful and then started to collect mobile phones and BlackBerrys," said a banker who was briefed later. The Chinese then distributed a four-point statement: Beijing was unlinking the yuan from the U.S. dollar effective immediately.
Then another surprise: The bankers were told they would have to cool their heels until an official statement was read nearly three hours later on China's government-controlled 7 p.m. news program.
That last-minute combination of surprise and secrecy was in keeping with the long-running drama over the yuan. It is a saga whose twists and turns included secret trips to Beijing by a U.S. envoy, debates among Chinese ministries about how much to revalue, and a seaside conference in China that featured American economists debating before an audience of high-level Chinese officials whether or not revaluation made sense.
According to U.S. and Chinese officials, China began thinking about allowing the yuan to rise in value against the U.S. dollar in 2003 with the accession to power of a younger, reform-minded generation of Chinese leaders led by President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Leading the push for change was the newly appointed head of the central bank, the scholarly, English-speaking Zhou Xiaochuan.
Foreign bankers consider Mr. Zhou one of the best of a new breed of senior Chinese officials familiar with the intricacies of global economics and market economies. Before running the central bank, Mr. Zhou spent 20 months as China's top stock-market regulator, but his credibility stemmed from top central-banking positions through the 1990s.
Proponents of a change in the yuan argued that more countries were moving toward flexible exchange-rate systems and that blindly tying the yuan to the value of the dollar kept China's financial system dangerously closed, hobbling the development of needed overhauls like market interest rates.
Opponents feared the impact a change would have on China's booming exports. A stronger yuan would tend to make China's exports more expensive relative to other countries' exports. And some were chafing at what was already becoming a drumbeat of American criticism of China's currency policy.
People were saying, " 'Why should we have to listen to what America says,' " said a Chinese official familiar with the yuan debate. Yet, similar debates about the currency policy were taking place among Chinese leaders, their views emerging through ministry-linked think tanks and reported prominently in the nation's financial media.
In the spring of 2003, the People's Bank stepped up its study of China's peg to the dollar and whether the government should make a change. It held staff seminars on exchange-rate and macroeconomic management, and invited leading U.S. economists to Beijing to present their views. The central bank also sent officials to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city's central bank, and the U.S. Federal Reserve for training.
Aware of the research taking place inside the central bank, economists at investment banks in Hong Kong and China began confidently predicting that China would scrap its peg to the dollar. That accelerated a guessing game in the financial markets about the yuan that would last for the better part of two years.
Meanwhile, in Washington, criticism of China swelled as the U.S. trade deficit with China widened. In 1998, U.S. officials had praised China for sticking with its fixed peg to the dollar during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. But now the U.S. and many European countries charged that the yuan was grossly undervalued and gave China an unfair advantage selling its products overseas.
Hoping to deflate the issue, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow flew to Beijing in early September 2003 to meet with Mr. Zhou and Chinese Finance Minister Jin Renjing. The Chinese adopted what became a very familiar line: They might one day move to a more-flexible exchange rate, but never under U.S. pressure.
Three times in 2004 Mr. Snow met with his Chinese counterparts to seek some sign of progress on the currency issue, each time coming away with little to show to increasingly vocal critics back home. China, in the meantime, was quietly stepping up its meetings with officials at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the city-state's central bank.
REVALUING THE YUAN
? Heard in Asia: Tradable-Share Plan Is Crucial
? Currency Traders Consider Ripple Effects
? China's Gesture Won't End Trade Disputes
? China bank's statement
? Econoblog: What's next?
? Background: History of floating rates
? See continuing coverage
Singapore was one of the most successful adherents to a managed floating exchange-rate system, presiding over an expanding economy and keeping inflation in check for several decades. China's central bankers sent midlevel staff for extended visits to Singapore's central bank to learn how it managed its exchange-rate regime.
In May 2004, China hosted a two-day conference in the seaside town of Dalian. Beijing-based officials, including Mr. Zhou and his deputy, listened to presentations on exchange-rate management from top American economists. Stanford University's Ronald McKinnon and Columbia University's Nobel Prize-winning Robert Mundell didn't support a change to China's peg to the dollar. Harvard University's Jeffrey Frankel and Morris Goldstein of the Institute for International Economics in Washington did. One big risk they saw to adjusting the exchange rate was that too small a change could prompt speculators to demand more, a situation China may now face.
At the end of the conference, a senior Chinese bank official stood up and said China planned to follow Mr. Mundell's advice in the short term and Mr. Goldstein's advice in the long term, "only we're not going to tell you how long the short term will be."
In Washington, congressional anger over the yuan came to a boil this spring. On April 6, Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Sen. Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican, pushed an amendment to the annual State Department spending bill that would impose 27.5% duties on all Chinese imports if Beijing didn't agree to revalue its currency. A vote to reject the amendment was defeated, 67-33. It was an overwhelming vote of support for the anti-China legislation -- especially coming from a chamber not known for its protectionist passions -- and it surprised the Bush administration.
Within the Treasury Department, the tone shifted markedly. "There was a sense of exhaustion over defending the Chinese," said a Treasury official. "There was a general sense of being tired."
On May 19, Mr. Snow appointed a special envoy to China on the currency issue, Olin Wethington, a longtime Treasury official who had just brokered a huge settlement for much of Iraq's international debt. Mr. Wethington left the next day on the first of what became three unpublicized, weeklong trips to Beijing during the next three months. "We made a judgment that...there was ample room for a quiet discreet effort out of the limelight," said another Treasury official. "But we realized we needed to broaden the dialogue within the regime and to reach into other parts of the government and to raise the issue much higher in the hierarchy."
During the next seven weeks, Mr. Wethington and his team met with political and business leaders in China, including officials in the Foreign Ministry, the president's office, the central bank and the upper ranks of the Communist Party. Mr. Wethington told the Chinese that if they didn't give significant flexibility to their exchange rate, there could be adverse consequences on the U.S. side.
By May, according to officials with the International Monetary Fund, it was becoming clear the Chinese were preparing to value the yuan against a basket of currencies and were spending a great deal of time with monetary authorities in Singapore to see how their system worked. The IMF had been pushing Beijing for several years to adopt the basket-of-currencies approach.
Inside China, people who deal with the central bank say, the bank was pushing for an initial 5% revaluation of the yuan against the dollar. But under pressure from other ministries that feared the impact on China's exports, China's State Council, or cabinet, decided instead on 2.1%.
On his final trip to China, late last month, Mr. Wethington picked up strong signals that the Chinese were ready to move on the yuan. But they also made clear that they would do nothing under direct pressure from the Bush administration or Congress. So on June 30, in a highly visible move, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and Mr. Snow went up to Capitol Hill for a highly staged closed-door session with Sens. Schumer and Graham.
The Chinese were ready to budge, the senators were told, but only if the Senate put aside its tariff threat. The senators emerged from the meeting and announced that they were delaying any vote on the amendment until after the August recess.
Late Wednesday, hours before the rest of the world heard of China's decision, the Bush administration received official word from Beijing that China was ready to alter its exchange rate and adopt what the central bank calls a managed floating-exchange rate that includes reference to a basket of unnamed currencies. Hong Kong was also told in advance, said a person with knowledge of the situation.
The next day, shortly before 7 p.m., Chinese officials delivered the government's official statement to the chief editor of China's main evening news program with directions that it be read at the top of the news. The statement was also placed on the Web sites of China's central bank and the official Xinhua news agency, both of which crashed under an avalanche of Internet hits.
人民币升值背后的曲折故事
上周四早间，几家主要外资银行接到通知，要求他们派代表到中国人民银行（People's Bank of China，即中国央行）开会。
会议是在下午3:30左右开始的，这也是中国外汇市场每天的收盘时间。当央行一位官员开始讲话时，会议室的大门被关闭并锁了起来。据一位后来获知会议情况的银行界人士说，随后央行官员开始谈论一些有点无关紧要的话题，然后，会议工作人员开始收取与会人员的手机和BlackBerry掌上电脑，接著开始分发有4个要点的声明。声明称，中国政府决定放弃人民币钉住美元的汇率制度，即刻开始生效。
这些银行人士随后被告知，他们必须静候正式声明在官方电视台当晚7点的黄金档新闻节目中播出后才能自由活动。这种在最后一刻作出出人意料之举并采取严格保密措施的做法与长时间来围绕人民币的所有表现倒是非常一致。这的确是一段充满曲折的传奇故事，在此过程中，美国特使曾多次秘密访华；中国有关部门就升值幅度一直存在争议；在一次海滨会议中，美国经济学家在一群中国高层官员面前争论升值是否有必要。
据知情人士说，早在2003年中国新一代领导人执政伊始，中国就开始考虑人民币升值的问题了。以胡锦涛和温家宝为首的这一代领导人更年轻，也更具开放意识。而人民币汇率改革最积极的推动者是中国人民银行新任行长、能讲一口流利英语的学者型领导人周小川。外国银行界人士认为，周是新一代中国高层官员中对全球经济和市场经济的错综复杂最具洞察力的一位。在出任中国人民银行行长之前，周小川曾担任了近两年的中国证监会主席，在此任上，他以作风严厉而闻名。
华盛顿国际经济研究所(Institute for International Economics)的戈德斯坦因(Morris Goldstein)等支持人民币汇率改革的人士认为，有越来越多的国家转向了灵活的外汇制度，中国将人民币汇率与美元挂钩的做法不仅导致中国金融体制落后不前，而且扭曲了中国的货币政策。而曾获诺贝尔奖的哥伦比亚大学教授蒙代尔(Robert Mundell)等反对人民币升值的人士则担心，人民币改革会给中国蓬勃兴旺的出口业带来负面影响。一些人对美国人对中国外汇制度横加指责甚为不满。
一位了解有关人民币争议情况的中国官员说，人们不禁反问，“为什么我们必须听从美国人说的话呢？”不过，中国领导人中间对是否改革也存在类似的争议，他们的观点通过各部委下设的研究机构以及国内财经媒体而显著见于报端。
2003年春，中国人民银行对人民币钉住美元制度以及是否应放弃这种制度加大了研究力度。它为内部员工组织了有关外汇汇率和宏观基金管理的研讨会，并从美国大学和投资银行界邀请一流经济学家到北京发表演讲，阐述他们在这些问题上的观点。据参加过这些讲座的人士说，中央领导人希望尽可能多地听取各种不同意见，包括那些赞成和反对汇率改革的意见。人民银行还派员到香港金管局(Hong Kong Monetary Authority)和美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve)参加培训。
获悉央行内部的这些动作之后，香港和中国大陆投行银行界的经济学家们开始私下里猜测，中国将放弃人民币钉住美元的机制。金融市场就此拉开了一场针对人民币是否会升值的猜谜游戏。
与此同时，随著美中贸易逆差不断扩大，美国政界针对中国的批评声也日甚一日。而在1998年的时候，美国还对中国在1997年的亚洲金融危机期间坚持让人民币钉住美元大加赞赏。时至今日，美国和许多欧洲国家却指责人民币汇率偏低，让中国商品在海外市场享受了不公正的价格优势。为解决这个问题，美国财政部长斯诺(John Snow) 2003年9月初曾到北京会晤了刚刚出任行长的周小川和财政部长金人庆。当时，中国就作出了日后被多次重复的表态：中国有朝一日可能会采取更灵活的汇率制度，但中国不会慑于美国的压力而采取行动。
斯诺在2004年曾三次会晤金人庆，以期找到中国在汇率问题上有所进展的蛛丝马迹，但每次都空手而归；他在美国声调越来越高的指责声在中国并未听到回音。而与此同时，中国却暗中加紧了与新加坡金管局(Monetary Authority of Singapore)官员的会晤。新加坡是世界上实施有管理的浮动汇率制最成功的国家之一，这种制度保证了新加坡几十年来在经济增长的同时通货膨胀也得到了控制。人民银行向新加坡金管局陆续派出中层官员，学习如何管理其汇率体系。
2004年5月，中国在海滨城市大连召开了为期两天的会议，会上，周小川和他的副手听取了美国一流经济学家有关外汇管理问题的演讲。蒙代尔和斯坦福大学(Stanford University)的麦金农(Ronald McKinnon)不赞成中国放弃钉住美元制度。而戈德斯坦因和哈佛大学(Harvard University)的弗兰克(Jeffrey Frankel)则持相反意见。
会议结束时，人民银行的一位高级官员站起来总结说，中国准备短期内采纳蒙代尔的建议，从长期计议则会采纳戈德斯坦因的建议，不过他们“不会告诉各位所谓短期究竟是指多长时间”。
戈德斯坦因事后回忆说，那位官员表示，短期可能是1个月，也可能是5年。
而在华盛顿，美国国会对人民币的不满情绪今年春季达到了顶点。4月16日，来自纽约的民主党参议院舒尔默(Charles Schumer)和南卡罗来纳州共和党人、参议员格莱汉姆(Lindsay Graham)极力要求对国务院每年一次的开支法案通过修正案，提出如果北京不同意让人民币升值，就对所有中国进口商品加征27.5%的关税。最终参议院以67比33的投票结果同意对修正案进行讨论。这个一边倒地支持实施反对中国的法案的投票结果让布什政府也大为震惊。
在美国财政部内部，人们的语调也开始出现明显变化。财政部另一位高级官员说，人们感觉到为中国辩护的力量精疲力竭了。大家总的来说有一种疲倦的感觉。5月19日，斯诺任命威廷顿(Olin Wethington)为与中国商谈人民币问题的特使。威廷顿长期在财政部任职，此前刚刚牵头对伊拉克国际债务中的很大一部分进行了大规模清算工作。威廷顿第二天就前往北京，开始了作为“人民币特使”的第一次中国之行（在接下来的两个月时间里，他又两次秘密对中国进行了为期一周的访问）。美国财政部一位官员说，“我们作出的判断是......在公众视线之外，还有很大的暗中采取谨慎行动的空间。“但我们意识到，需要在制度框架内扩大对话，并与政府其他部门接触，在更高层次上提出这个问题”。
美国政府官员从未支持过舒尔默和格莱汉姆的法案，但它承认这个法案为他们应对北京提供了更大的周旋空间。在随后的7周时间里，威廷顿和特使团其他成员拜会了大量中国政府和商界的领导人，其中包括外交部、胡锦涛办公室和中国人民银行的高级官员以及中国共产党的高层人士。
威廷顿对这些中方人士表示，如果中国不显著提高人民币汇率的灵活性，那将对美国方面产生非常不利的、布什政府也无力挽回的影响。据国际货币基金组织(IMF)官员说，到5月份时，中国有可能让人民币与一篮子货币挂钩的苗头已经很明显，有关部门用大量时间与新加坡金管局人士接触，了解新加坡外汇体系的运行情况。国内方面，一位与央行有工作往来的人士说，央行提出先升值5%，但由于其他部门担心升值太多影响出口，国务院(State Council)最后决定先升值2.1%。
在6月底最后一次到访中国时，威廷顿注意到了中国人准备对人民币采取行动的强烈信号。但中国人也明确表示在华盛顿或美国国会直接施压的情况下他们不会采取任何行动。于是在6月30日，联邦储备委员会主席格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)以及斯诺公开前往国会山，与舒尔默和格莱汉姆举行了并不那么“私下”的闭门会议。
两位议员被告知，中国已准备采取行动，但除非参议院不再威胁要加征关税。结束会面后两人宣布，将把对修正案的投票表决推迟到8月份国会休会期结束之后。
上周三晚间，在中国宣布人民币升值之前数小时，布什政府收到了中国政府的正式通知，告知他们中国已经准备好调整汇率，并实行有管理的浮动汇率制，这种制度将使人民币汇率得以缓慢爬升或下跌。威廷顿随后准备再度前往北京，重申美国仍希望中国让人民币自由浮动。
据知情人士说，香港方面事先也被告知了有关信息。这位人士说，他们有这个责任或者义务。
第二天，就在晚上7点之前，中国官员向中国国家电视台晚间新闻节目的主编发送了政府的正式声明，并指示声明要作为新闻头条播出。声明同时还出现在中国人民银行和官方媒体新华社(Xinhua news agency)的网站上，两家网站很快就被网络用户点“爆”了。
宣传部的官员也打电话给国内报纸的编辑，告诉他们在播发有关升值的消息时只能采用新华社的通稿，且不可另外作附加报导。
一家大型英资银行驻上海的一位管理人士说：他们在管理突发事件方面的确是很在行的。我问过的每一个人事先都不知道马上就要升值了。
