Currency Wars
In 1839, the first Opium War began when Chinese customs officials at Canton destroyed a large quantity of opium that British merchants were trying to smuggle into China in order to buy tea and silks. British gunboats were sent in to force the opening not only of Canton, but several more northern Chinese ports on the Yangtze river -- the most important being Shanghai. Hong Kong was ceded entirely to Britain as a Crown Colony. Several desultory wars and skirmishes later led to the Treaty of Tianjin in 1858, when China was forced to open 11 more treaty ports to foreigners -- including Americans, French and Russians -- to accept foreign goods and to legalize the importation of opium.
On July 21, 2005, China again gave in to concerted foreign pressure -- some of it no doubt well intentioned -- to give up the fixed exchange rate it had held and grown into over the course of a decade. Congress had threatened to pass (and may still do so) a bill that would impose an import tariff of 27.5% on Chinese imports unless the renminbi was appreciated, and had pressured the Bush administration to retain China's legal status as a "centrally planned" economy (despite its wide open character) so that other trade sanctions -- such as anti-dumping duties -- could be more easily imposed.
A decade ago, when negotiations over China's entry into the WTO began, a raft of Wall Street banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions subsequently pressured the U.S. Treasury to require China to loosen its capital controls and gradually permit the entry of foreign firms into China's domestic financial markets -- even though these financial conditions were not required of other WTO member countries. China is complying with these terms, as well as eliminating tariffs and quotas on imports beyond what was required by the WTO agreement.
While (uncertain) currency appreciation or the premature dismantling of capital controls on currency inflows and outflows are not as malign as an opium plague, the danger to China's heretofore robust economic growth and great success in lifting large numbers of people out of abject poverty should not be underestimated.
By holding the exchange rate of 8.28 yuan to the dollar constant for almost 10 years, and building monetary policy around this anchor, China's rate of inflation in its CPI has converged to that in the U.S., at a low level of about 2% per year. In part because other East Asian countries (except Japan) were also more or less pegged to the dollar in a region where almost all trade is invoiced in dollars, the fixed dollar exchange rate was a very successful anchor for China's monetary policy. This collective dollar pegging within East Asia also ensured exchange stability and price-level alignment, which allowed regional trade and investment to grow rapidly and efficiently. Under the fixed rate, China's own high GDP and productivity growth were particularly impressive.
However, on July 21, the renminbi was appreciated by 2% -- a small amount in and of itself -- while a narrow band of 0.3% on either side was maintained. More important was the implicit announcement that the old "parity" rate of 8.28 yuan per dollar was being abandoned, but there was no clear statement of how the heavily managed float would evolve. Now that the future exchange rate has become uncertain, executing monetary and foreign exchange policy in China will be much more difficult. I have five negative comments on the new policy:
(1) With the fixed exchange rate now unhinged, the People's Bank of China (PBC) will have to come up with a new anchor or rule that governs monetary policy. None was announced when the PBC let the exchange rate go. Will the PBC institute an internal inflation target? What will be the financial instruments it uses to achieve this target?
(2) Because China's inflation rate had converged to the American level (or slightly less), any substantial sustained appreciation of the RMB (the Americans want 20% to 25%) will drive China into deflation -- preceded by a slowdown in exports, domestic investment, and GDP growth more generally.
(3) If the PBC allows only small appreciations (as with the 2% appreciation announced on July 21) with the threat of more appreciations to follow, then hot money inflows will accelerate. If China attempts further financial liberalization such as interest rate decontrol, open market interest rates in China will be forced toward zero as arbitrageurs bet on a higher future value of the RMB. China is already very close to falling into a zero-interest liquidity trap much like Japan's -- the short-term interbank rate in Shanghai has fallen toward 1%. In a zero-interest liquidity trap, the PBC (like the Bank of Japan before it) would become helpless to combat deflationary pressure.
(4) Any appreciations, whether large and discrete or small and step-by-step, will have no predictable effect on China's trade surplus. The slowdown in economic growth will reduce China's demand for imports even as exports fall so that the effect on its net trade balance is indeterminate.
(5) Because the effect of appreciations on China's trade surplus will be ambiguous, American protectionists will come back again and again to complain that any appreciation is not big enough. So abandoning the "traditional" rate of 8.28 yuan per dollar will, at best, result in only a temporary relaxation of foreign pressure on China.
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Lest you think that my assessment of China's new policy is too negative, compare it to the experience of Japan two decades ago and earlier. From the 1980s into the mid 1990s, Japan-bashing was in vogue in the U.S., much as China-bashing is in vogue today. Back then, Japan had the biggest bilateral trade surplus with the U.S. and was continually threatened (more by the Congress than the president) with trade sanctions unless there were temporary "voluntary" export restraints on particular exports, and the yen be allowed to appreciate. Indeed, the yen appreciated episodically all the way from 360 to the dollar in 1971 to touch 80 to the dollar in April 1995. This unhinged the Japanese financial system (the bubble economy of the late 1980s) and eventually resulted in Japan's unrelenting deflationary slump of the 1990s -- its "lost" decade. Japan has yet to recover fully and remains today in a zero-interest liquidity trap, which prevents the Bank of Japan from reigniting economic growth. And Japan's trade surplus as a share of GNP has not been reduced in any obvious way.
Thanks in large part to pressure from our lawmakers in Washington, China is now in a nebulous no man's land regarding its monetary and exchange rate policies. Instead of clear guidelines with a well-defined monetary anchor, its macro economic decision-making will be ad hoc and anybody's guess -- as was (and still is) true for Japan.
Mr. McKinnon, a professor of economics at Stanford, is the author, most recently, of "Exchange Rates under the East Asian Dollar Standard: Living with Conflicted Virtue" (MIT Press, 2005).
汇率之战
1839年，广东海关查获了英国商人走私到中国的大量预备用来换取茶叶和丝绸的鸦片，海关官员随后点燃了“虎门销烟”的大火，而第一次鸦片战争也随即爆发。英国军舰的到来不仅最后导致了广东口岸的开放，扬子江上的几个港口也被迫向它们敞开了大门，其中最重要的是上海口岸。
香港被迫割让给英国人，成为英帝国的一个殖民地。随后数年间断断续续的战争和冲突最终导致1858年《天津条约》的签署，据此，中国被迫向美、法、俄等国又开放了11处口岸，允许进口外国商品并使鸦片进口合法化。
2005年7月21日，中国再次屈服于外国的压力（有些当然是出于善意），宣布放弃实行了10年的固定汇率。美国国会就曾威胁要通过一项对进口中国商品加征27.5%的关税，除非中国让人民币升值；它还向布什政府施压，要求仍认定中国属于“计划经济”国家（虽然对中国的开放世人已有目共睹）。
10年前，在就中国为加入世界贸易组织(WTO)进行谈判的过程中，华尔街的许多银行、保险公司、投资银行和其他金融机构相继要求美国财政部向中国施压，让中国放松资本管制并逐渐对外国公司开放金融市场，而有些具体要求不曾对其他WTO成员国提出过。中国答应了这些条件，同时还在WTO协议的要求之外取消了关税壁垒和进口配额。
尽管货币升值或永久性取消对货币进出国境的资本管制并不像鸦片的毒害性那么大，但它对中国强劲的经济增长和在成功帮助大量人口摆脱贫困方面所造成的负面影响也不应低估。
在人民币实行与美元挂钩的固定汇率并据此制定货币政策的10年间，中国的年通货膨胀率在2%左右，与美国接近。由于东亚地区的对外贸易大多以美元结算，因此，其他东亚国家（除日本外）的货币或多或少也都与美元挂钩，由于这一原因和其他因素的作用，固定汇率制成为中国制定货币政策的有效基石。
东亚国家货币钉住美元的制度选择还保证了汇率稳定和价格水平的调整，这使该地区的贸易和投资得以迅速而有效地增长。在固定汇率体系下，中国国民经济的高速增长和生产力的迅速提高给世人留下了深刻印象。
但本月21日人民币汇率上调了2%（说到底这只是很小幅度的上调），原来0.3%的波动范围保持不变。比升值更重要的是有关升值的声明，它在放弃原来的人民币8.28元兑1美元的基准价的同时，并没有阐明人民币的所谓有管理的浮动汇率制将如何演化。
在未来的汇率前景变得扑朔迷离的情况下，中国执行货币和外汇政策的难度将更大。我对于新的汇率政策有以下5点负面评论：
(1) 取消固定汇率后，中国央行将不得不提出一个新的政策“锚”，也就是制定货币政策的基本原则。但央行在宣布升值时对此并未提及。那么央行会制定一个内部的通货膨胀目标作为依据吗？它实现整个目标的金融工具又是什么呢？
(2) 由于中国的通货膨胀率与美国接近，人民币如果持续大幅升值（美国人的希望是20%-25%）将使中国陷入通货紧缩──在出口放缓、投资减少和GDP增幅下滑之后。
(3) 如果央行只允许小幅升值（就像这次的2%一样），给市场留下随后进一步升值的预期，那么热钱的流入将加速。如果中国试图加大金融自由化的努力，比如开放利率，那么开放后由于投机商在未来进一步升值的预期下大作投机交易，人民币利率势必会被迫跌向零水平。
中国已经差不多要像日本一样跌到零利率的流动性陷阱了：上海银行间市场短期利率已快跌至1%。如果陷入零利率的陷阱，中国央行（将同以前的日本央行一样）在面对通货紧缩时束手无策。
(4) 只要开始升值，不论是大幅度且间断进行的，还是小幅度实施的，都将对中国的贸易顺差产生不可预料的影响。在出口下降的同时，经济增长放缓将减少中国对进口商品的需求，如此一来，最后的净贸易余额如何也就难以预料了。
(5) 由于升值对中国贸易顺差的影响目前还难以确定，因此，美国的保护主义者会一而再、再而三地抱怨升值幅度不够。因此，放弃“传统的”8.28元兑1美元的固定汇率充其量只是暂时缓解了外国对中国的压力。
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为避免你认为我对中国最新政策的评价过于负面，可以将其同20多年前日本的经历进行比较。从80年代到90年代中期，抨击日本在美国一度非常流行，就像今天指责中国一样。当时，日本同美国的贸易顺差最大，因而不断受到（主要来自美国国会，而非总统的）威胁，要求其暂时“自觉”限制某些产品的出口，并允许日圆升值，否则就是实施贸易制裁。的确，日圆从1971年的1美元兑360日圆升值到1995年的80日圆。这使日本金融体制表现失常（80年代时的泡沫），并最终导致日本在90年代陷了入严重的通货紧缩。直到今日，日本也未能完全复苏，现在仍保持零利率水平，这使日本央行无法刺激经济增长。而日本贸易盈余占国民生产总值(GNP)的比例并未明显降低。
由于来自美国国会议员的压力等原因，中国目前的货币和汇率政策现在处于一个真空地带。中国的宏观经济决策将不再是有著良好货币政策准则的明确方针，而是随机的和难以猜测的──如同日本的情况一样。
（编者按：麦金农(McKinnon)是斯坦福大学经济学教授，“Exchange Rates under the East Asian Dollar Standard: Living with Conflicted Virtue”一文的作者。）
