One argument for floating the Chinese renminbi (RMB) is to insulate China's monetary policy from the US effect. However, we note that both theoretical considerations and empirical results do not offer a definite answer on the link between exchange rate arrangement and policy dependence. We examine the empirical relevance of the argument by analyzing the interactions between the Chinese and US interest rates. Our empirical results, which appear robust to various assumptions of data persistence, suggest that the US effect on the Chinese interest rate is quite weak. Apparently, even with its de facto peg to the US dollar, China has alternative measures to retain its policy independence and de-link its interest rates from the US rate. In other words, the argument for a flexible RMB to insulate China's monetary policy from the US effect is not substantiated by the observed interest rate interactions.

This paper examines the currency exposure and exchange rate risk management at Chinese textile and apparel exporters. Chinese exporting firms have large net exposure to the US dollar. On average a 10 percent increase in the value of the renminbi against the dollar would reduce net revenues by 5.4 percent if the firms left prices unchanged. This large exposure is driven heavily by the choice of export pricing currency by the firms. The regional distribution of sales is more balanced across the major export markets of the US, EU, and Japan. However many firms are unaware of their indirect currency risk to currencies other than the dollar and most firms undertake little or no activities to hedge their foreign currency exposure, direct or indirect. The large dollar exposure of Chinese exporters may help explain the reluctance of the People's Bank of China to allow the RMB to undergo a rapid appreciation against the dollar.

The US dollar has been volatile and falling again and again in recent decades as well as recent years, and for many observers, it is going to be broken sooner or later. The central importance of the dollar is due to the fact that it is not just a currency for the US. Over half of all dollar bills in circulation are held outside of the US borders, and almost half of the US Treasury bonds are held as reserves by foreign central banks. The US dollar is supposed to be the anchor that stabilizes the global currency market. Instead, today it is a major source of instability. In the back ground, the US fiscal deficits have been running high again under Bush administration, once up to almost 3% of US GDP. And current account deficit is set to about 7% in 2005 and more volatility is widely expected. The situation is very challenging for the central banks of Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore which collectively hold about US$2.8 trillion worth of US Treasury bonds as part of their reserves. The moment that they reduce their purchases, the value of the dollar slips. Yet, the more they buy, the more they are exposed to a potential free fall of the US dollar. China has been blamed, not only by US congressmen who are understandably not very familiar with either the complicated currency issues or the domestic politics in any other country, but also many economists or business strategists. It was said that it was all because RMB did not reevaluate, as the source of this "global imbalance" and currency instability. How much revaluation of RMB would remove the US deficits of $700 billions, or at least the US-China trade deficits $200 billions (including Hong Kong)? 500% or 1000%? Of cause no body asked for that kind of magnitude now. Normally smart people say 30-50%, with the unsaid intention to blame-then-suggest again another 30-50% after some initial moves, then the third, the fourth. This seems not really new phenomena at all. It has been all so familiar before and since the Nixon shock in early 70s', and in 80s' when there was the Plaza Accord. The convenient targets to blame were the gold standard, the Dutch Mark, the Japanese Yen. Now it is turn for Chinese reminbi. So the question is what are the real causes of the global imbalance and currency instability? In this short paper, we first take a look at what is really going on with the Chinese economy and trade balance, and then try to identify sources of the current imbalance , and then, as a concluding remark, think again the possibilities to reform the global currency system.

This paper proposes a path-dependent approach for estimating maximum appreciations of the renminbi expected by the market based on first-passage-time distributions. Using market data of the renminbi spot exchange rates, non-deliverable forward rates and currency option prices from 21 July 2005 (the reform of the exchange rate regime) to 28 February 2008 for model parameters, the maximum appreciations of the renminbi estimated under the proposed approach show that the market expected another large movement of the exchange rate during the 14 months after the reform. Subsequently, the few occasions of appreciations beyond the expected maximums coincided with the trade-related issues and speculations of greater momentum of appreciation allowed by the authorities. The PBoC's measures were however largely incorporated into the derivatives' prices. The proposed approach can be used to gauge the range of appreciations of the renminbi anticipated in the market and to identify any exchange rate movements beyond market expectations.

Our study shows that China could contribute to an orderly global rebalancing by a package of policies to stimulate its domestic consumption. These policies include a progressive appreciation of RMB, fiscal stimuli of increasing social expenditures on education, healthcare, social safety net and poverty reduction, income policies to reduce inequality and to strengthen wages income, and reforms of the financial system to improve financial efficiency and mitigate financial constraints. With these policies, China's external surplus can be narrowed along with an improvement of its domestic imbalances. The excessively high saving rate will be lowered and the share of household consumption will increase, even although GDP growth will moderate slightly.

Prior to April 2005, only one third of the shares issued by exchange-listed companies in China are publicly tradable. The other two thirds, mainly owned by Chinese government agencies or government-linked enterprises, are prohibited from public trading. On April 29, 2005, the Chinese Securities Regulatory Committee announced a reform plan that aims to abolish the split-share structure by converting all non-tradable shares to be publicly tradable. We investigate the consequences of this unique event and shed light on how increase in share float affects liquidity, speculation and stock prices. Firstly, we find that tradable A-shares command a 60% price premium on average over non-tradable A-shares and this price premium contains both liquidity and speculation components. Secondly, the share structure reform increases share turnover and dampens speculative trading. Relative to control firms, share turnover of restructured firms increases substantially after the reform, with the largest increase (107 %) in firms that had low liquidity and low speculative trading before the reform. In contrast. there is no increase in share turnover of firms that had high liquidity and high speculative trading. Thirdly. stock prices drop substantially on the day when the supply of tradable shares increases due to the reform. Moreover. the higher increase in the supply of tradable A-shares. the larger drop in the stock price. This indicates that the short-term demand curve is downward-sloping. Fourthly. despite the fall in stock prices. shareholder wealth increases by 15% on average. We find that the largest price drop and the smallest wealth gain occurs in firms with the highest speculative trading before the reform. which suggests that share structure reform dampens speculative trading in Chinese market. Lastly, split share reform also benefits the B-share market despite that the reform involves only A shares: B-share turnover increases after the reform and the well-known B share price discount narrows substantially .

On 21 July 2005 China adopted an undisclosed basket exchange rate regime. We formally assess and envisage the gradual evolution of the renminbi over time. We utilize nonlinear dependencies in the renminbi exchange rate and describe the smooth transition of the renminbi/U.S. dollar (RMB/USD) exchange rate using the family of time-varying autoregressive (TV-AR) models. The results indicate that the forward-looking nonlinear model adequately depicts the gradual reform process underlying the new RMB exchange rate regime.

Recent events in China provide a historical opportunity to study the expropriation of minority shareholders. In this paper, we document the use of inter-corporate loans by controlling shareholders to extract funds from Chinese listed firms. Using accounting information from public sources, we show how tens of billions of RMB were siphoned from hundreds of companies during the 1996 to 2006 period. Specifically, we show the nature and extent of these abuses, evaluate their economic consequences, explore their cross-sectional determinants, and report on the extensive efforts by auditors and regulators that eventually contained this practice. Collectively, our findings shed light on the nature and severity of the tunneling problem in China, and the on-going challenges associated with regulatory reform in the country.

This paper investigates the market response to reform of the Chinese split (A-)share structure using a sample of companies included in the China Securities Index 300. We find the three-day cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) to be negative and significant around government announcement of the reform on 29 April 2005, but not significant around individual companies’ decision to implement the reform. We attribute this change in market sentiment to the release of information during company announcement that the reform will feature some type of consideration to existing shareholders of tradable A-shares. Our results also show that existing holders of tradable A-shares require higher returns when companies pay in warrants or combination methods. However, we find no relation between the level of consideration and CAR suggesting that investors perceive the consideration to be adequate based on the company’s financial and operating conditions at the time of the reform.

An unparalleled feature ownership structures in China is the presence of non tradable shares (NTS). NTS represented a major hurdle to domestic financial market development for its negative effects on liquidity and market transparency. After some failed attempts, in 2005 the Chinese authorities have launched a structural reform program aiming at eliminating NTS. In this paper, we evaluate the stock price effects of the actual implementation of this reform in 368 firms. The NTS reform generated a statistically significant 8 percent positive abnormal return over the event window, adjusting prices for the compensation requested by tradable shareholders. Results are consistent with the expectation of improved economic fundamentals such as better corporate governance and enhanced liquidity.