Part 2
Introduction
China’s export growth and penetration have been remarkable. While China was basically a closed economy 30 years ago, it is now the leading exporter to Japan, the second leading exporter to Europe, and the third leading exporter to the US. This surge in exports has been accompanied by growing trade imbalances between China and the rest of the world. China’s global current account surplus equaled 9% of Chinese GDP in 2006 and 11% of GDP in 2007 (Thorbecke & Smith, 2010). These surpluses are primarily with the US and Europe. Due to these factors, the exchange rate policy of China has attracted a great deal of attention in academic, industrial and political arenas. With the emerging China economy as the largest reserve country and the largest “world factory”, the Chinese renminbi (RMB) exchange rate has been the centre of ongoing debate over the source of global current account imbalance, especially with the United States (Sato, Shimizu, Shrestha & Zhang, 2012). Since the direct peg to the dollar was ended in 2005, the RMB has continued its appreciation about 6% per year and enhanced flexibility over the past 7 years. However, appreciation pressure on the RMB remains intense and it is still debatable whether and to what extent the current level of the RMB exchange rate is overvalued or undervalued.
Issues
Political Influences
One of the main reasons for the appreciation pressure on the RMB is the US’ claim that the Chinese government has made the value of its currency artificially low by manipulating the exchange rate. The weakened RMB in turns spurs imports from China and undercuts exports to China, contributing to a widening trade gap between China and the US, Japan and the Euro countries. This in turn causes job losses in manufacturing in those countries. Empirical tests show that there is an existence of a significant long-run