中国终于屈服于美国压力，允许人民币汇率浮动
China Will Allow Its Currency to Fluctuate More By KEITH BRADSHER 10:53 AM ET
The central bank, trying to cool the economy, also raised interest rates and required banks to put aside more assets.
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HONG KONG, May 18 — China’s central bank announced late today thatit would begin allowing the country’s currency to fluctuate more during each day’s foreign exchange trading but again rebuffed demands from theUnited States and Europe for a sustained rise in the currency’s value.
The central bank also raised interest rates and demanded that commercial banks set aside more of their assets as reserves that cannot be lent. The two moves are aimed at tightening credit and reducing the risk of overheating in an economy that is growing at more than 11 percent annually and in domestic stock markets, which have more than tripled since the beginning of last year.
The currency announcement came as top American and Chinese economic policy makers prepare to meet next week in Washington in an effort to head offgrowing pressures from Congress to address the widening American trade deficit. But the policy shifts announced tonight, which will take effect on Saturday, are unlikely to have any practical effect on China’s soaring exports, economists said.
The People’s Bank of China said in a statement posted on its Web site that it would allow the currency, known as the yuan or renminbi, to rise or fall up to 0.5 percent in each day’strading. The current daily limit is 0.3 percent.
But the central bank gave a clear signal in its statement that the new policy should not be interpreted as Chinese willingness to allow a run-up in the value of the dollar. The bank said it would continue to “keep the exchange rate basically stable at an adaptive and equilibrium level based on market supply and demand with reference to a basket of currencies.”
The bank issued a separate statement quoting an unidentified spokesman as saying that the decision does not mean that the exchange rate “will see large ups and downs, nor large appreciati*****.”
The People’s Bank has not allowed the yuan to move the maximum allowed percentage on anyday since it broke the yuan’s peg to the dollar on July 21, 2005. The Chinese government allowed the yuan to rise 2.1 percent then, and has only let it inch up by another 5 percent over the nearly two years since then.
By contrast, members of Congress from manufacturing states that have lost jobs during China’s export boom have been calling for China to revalue by 25 percent or more. If China were to allow the yuan to rise more quickly, this would make Chinese exports more expensive in foreign markets and would make foreign goods more competitive in China.
Liang Hong, an economist at Goldman Sachs, said that the wider trading band represented, “a symbolic but laudable development in China’s foreign exchange reform.”
Widening the daily trading band is the latest and most drastic in along series of steps by Chinese officials to gently awaken Chinese businesses to the risks that fluctuating currencies can pose. China pegged the yuan at 8.27 to the dollar from 1997 to 2005, lulling some businesses and entrepreneurs into ignoring currency risk.
In interviews last month at the Canton Fair, exporters from all over China said that they were paying much closer attention to exchange rates.While Chinese export contracts are still denominated mainly in dollars,Chinese companies increasingly demand that their foreign customers agree to provisi***** requiring the buyer to pay extra if the dollar starts falling faster against the yuan.
Chinese officials have acknowledged that there are economic arguments for faster appreciation of the yuan but contend that this could threaten what they describe as“social stability” — the risk that Chinese workers and farmers who lost their jobs because of currency appreciation might stage protests against the government.
Two-thirds of China’s population stilllives in rural areas and China’s agricultural sector is barely competitive with imports at current currency levels, raising the prospect of increased rural unemployment if the yuan were to rise sharply and food exports were to follow.
The People’s Bank of China raised the bench mark regulated rate for one-year bank deposits by27 hundredths of a percent, to 3.06 percent, and increased the bench mark rate for one-year bank loans by 18 hundredths of a percent,to 6.57 percent. By raising deposit rates more than lending rates, thegovernment showed confidence that the banks have put enough of their bad loan problems behind them to survive on slightly narrower profit margins.
The central bank also ordered banks to hold 11.5 percent of assets as reserves, up from 11 percent. Many banks already have even larger reserves, however, as they have been swamped with deposits from China’s brisk economic growth and large trade surplus,and have had trouble finding ways to lend this money.
