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Finance and capital markets
Course: Finance and capital markets > Unit 8
Lesson 6: Chinese currency and U.S. debt- Floating exchange resolving trade imbalance
- China pegs to dollar to keep trade imbalance
- China buys US bonds
- Review of China US currency situation
- Data on Chinese M1 increase in 2010
- Data on Chinese foreign assets increase in 2010
- Data on Chinese US balance of payments
- Chinese inflation
- Floating exchange effect on China
- Floating exchange effect on US
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Chinese inflation
Chinese inflation. Created by Sal Khan.
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- How can a weaker renminbi undermine the exporters price competitiveness?(4 votes)
- The higher inflation in China reduces the profit motive for Chinese producers. If prices go up in China, then the money they obtain from selling exports in the US will have lower purchasing power, regardless of how the People's Bank of China intervenes to keep the Renminbi/yuan weak. China exporters will either be forced to demand more for their exports (hurting competiveness) or accept a lower real price (less lucrative). Either way, this should result in fewer exports. In short TWO mechanisms exist to help balance out the trade. The exchange rate and the domestic inflation (caused by the money flowing in from exports to the US). China can peg its currency all it wants, but it will not be able to control inflation indefinitely.(19 votes)
- Sooo... WHY?!... Why China do this? Why they inject this extra currency (over the amount required for the "undesired" foreign currency to "dissapear") Why they need (hyper-)inflation hit them?(1 vote)
- They're trying REALLY hard to keep their exporters competitive -- keeping their prices down -- so the factories can keep running and employing lots of people. Unemployment in a nation that size means massive unrest and social upheaval, and the Chinese leaders are more than happy to debase their currency in order to keep those workers working.
No jobs? Riots, social unrest, maybe even a coup d'etat...(7 votes)
- whats inflation deflation(2 votes)
- Inflation is the increase in the general price of goods and deflation is the reverse of that. There are various ways of measuring inflation, often represented as an index the most common being Consumer Price Index or CPI.(3 votes)
- Can anyone please shed some light on this? I am confused as to why we are seeing inflation in China. If the People Bank of China is printing the required amount of money to keep the Yuan pegged against the Dollar ( or against other currencies it trading with) we should not see an increase in the money supply. Is China printing more Yuan than is needed to keep their currency pegged against the dollar to devalue it even more? If its price inflation we are talking about, I understand that due to a growing economy, there would me more demand for good and services which would lead to prices increases of commodities. But why are the economist stating the rate of inflation could be twice as high? Thank you.(1 vote)
- Of course there is an increase in the money supply. When you print a Yuan, that is an increase in the supply of Yuan. It doesn't matter that you are buying dollars with them, because all those dollars are loaned back out again. So, both the newly-printed yuan and the dollars are going back into circulation.(2 votes)
- I'm so confused about the relationship between domestic inflation in China
and weaker renminbi relative to dollar.
Aren't two of the things the same in general?(1 vote)- Simply put,
1. Domestic inflation in China is caused by an oversupply of renminbi (人民币). This occurs because the government is trying to depreciate the value of the RMB to allow Chinese exporters to get a competitive price on their products in foreign markets.
2. Because the Chinese government is devaluing the RMB, essentially 1 RMB can purchase fewer dollars. Khan explained it like this. If there is 1 RMB and 1 USD in the world,
1 RMB = 1 USD. However, if there are 2 RMB, 1 USD in the world, 1 RMB = 0.5 USD.
Thus domestic inflation can lead to a weaker renminbi relative to the dollar.
That's oversimplified, but I hope it gets the point across. I think this is the basic concept.(2 votes)
- To clarify: is the renminbi actually five yuan or is it conceptually five yuan?(1 vote)
- They are not always the same. Technically yuan is one of the currency units in renminbi, like cents and dollars. But, almost always yuan and renminbi are used interchangeably, even if it may not be technically correct.(2 votes)
- If the chinese central bank is printing yuan to buy excess dollars (and is not giving these yuan to the chinese economy or banks) how can it be creating inflation in China?(1 vote)
- When they buy the dollars, where do the yuan go?(1 vote)
- Which part of Renminbi is "extra" Renminbi and which part is not "extra".(1 vote)
- "The EXTRA renminbi are feeding inflation" - Tracking the example (from the first video in the series) if they printed 180 million Yuan for the extra 30 million $, all their new print money is being used up in buying $,. Then how is the money supply increasing at home to cause inflation ? In general I mean to ask if all the new Chines Yuan are invested outside the country - will it still cause inflation at home ?(1 vote)
- How can yuan be invested outside of China?(1 vote)
- The inflation is probably due to the increase of foreign trade and decrease of domestic trade. Argo, this means that the rather low ranked yuan is facing against higher denominations, such as the Euro and Dollar. This rivalry is also showing with the USA, due to the fact that the Euro is more powerful than the Dollar due to the increase in trade between the EU and the USA. My question is, do any of you think there will actually be a recession of sorts in China, or will the balance the yuan.(1 vote)
- I think, there will not be a recession in China for the next couple of years. Of course there are plenty of things that are overpriced at the moment, but in the short term everything will be fine. A recession happens when your income is less than your expenses. Even if you have lots of savings in the bank, you will still feel the slight squeeze when you pay is cut. And that you have to start using your savings. That's how recession feels like: A pay cut or sudden increase in debt where you have to pay more.
Well, as long as the income continues to flow in without reducing, there will be no recession. More often than not, you can feel the slow down much sooner than the recession. That's usually from reduced income.(1 vote)
Video transcript
Given that the Chinese central
bank is printing yuan in order to keep it devalued to
other foreign currencies, especially relative
to the dollar, a question that may have
jumped into your brain is, is this causing inflation? And when I talk
about inflation, I'm talking about price inflation. Is it making a basket of
goods in China more expensive? And the other type of inflation
that the word inflation is sometimes to referring
to is monetary inflation. That, by definition,
is increasing. They are definitely
increasing the money supply, but is it making the price
of goods and services in China more expensive? And to answer that question,
I have this article here from the "New York Times"
written by Keith Bradsher, early January, 2011. And he writes, "in
China, consumer prices were 5.1% higher in November
than a year earlier." Remember, in the US, we
try to target inflation to be between 1 and 3%. So the official government data. So this is according to
official government data, they admit that their
inflation is at 5.1%. But the next sentence is
even more interesting. "And many economists say the
official figures actually understate the
rate of inflation, which might in reality
be twice as high." And there's tons of
ways to kind of engineer the actual inflation depending
on what the basket of goods is and how you adjust for things. Now though, that
cheap currency policy seems to be reaching its limits. The extra renminbi-- and this
is a big point of confusion when people talk about
the currency in China. The renminbi is the
name of the currency while the yuan is kind of
when someone talks about hey, I give you five yuan, or you owe
me five yuan, something like. They wouldn't say you
owe me five renminbi. And a good analogy is if
you go to Great Britain and you buy something, they'll
say, well it'll be five pounds. So in Great Britain,
five pounds is what they say when you're
actually buying something, but the name of the currency
is called the sterling. It's kind of like if
people called the dollar US legal tender. That's the equivalent
of renminbi, while you yuan would
be like the dollar. So five pounds is
called the sterling. So the similar analogy,
five yuan, they call that the renminbi. So they're saying the extra
renminbi are feeding inflation. That is starting to
undermine exporters' price competitiveness. Just as a stronger
renminbi would do if Beijing was not
intervening to begin with. So the whole reason why
they're printing this money is to keep the
currency devalued, but that's making things more
expensive in terms of yuan. So in the end, that's
kind of counteracting some of this cheap
currency policy. It's making their
exports more expensive. Money supply figures
for December, which the central bank
released on Tuesday, showed that cash and bank
deposits were increasing at a rate twice as fast as
even China's soaring economy. So if you increase the
money supply roughly in line with the
growth in the economy, then you wouldn't experience
too much inflation. But they're increasing
it twice as fast. Ever more renminbi are available
to buy goods and services. So you see they're
clearly doing that to try to keep their currency devalued,
but they're reaching kind of-- it seems kind of a
breaking point where they won't be able to do it as
aggressively going forward.