Main content
Finance and capital markets
Course: Finance and capital markets > Unit 8
Lesson 5: Foreign exchange and trade- Currency exchange introduction
- Currency effect on trade
- Currency effect on trade review
- Pegging the yuan
- Chinese Central Bank buying treasuries
- American-Chinese debt loop
- Debt loops rationale and effects
- China keeps peg but diversifies holdings
- Carry trade basics
- Comparing GDP among countries
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Chinese Central Bank buying treasuries
Chinese Central Bank Buying Treasuries. Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- How can the Chinese government simply print Yuan out of thin air to buy dollars? Doesn't that increase inflation in China? The Chinese government is also getting something (US dollars) for nothing (fiat Yuan).(5 votes)
- Yes, it does increase inflation in China. Especially since the country's structural capacity remains high due to all the heavy exports China sends to not only the US, but to a significant amount of the rest of the world as well. Most economic analyses I've seen presented to the US Congress have more or less stated a general belief that, due to the threat of a dangerously high rise in inflation, China will be forced to slow this process and to very carefully take measures to allow its currency to increase to its more "natural" value.(16 votes)
- I apologize if this is addressed in a future video but I'd like to point out (and wonder why it isn't mentioned) that the USA also prints money 'out of thin air' on a vast scale. What affect does this have on this equation between US and China? Both sides devalue their existing currencies through this action, so is it 'self-policed' or is it running amok?(9 votes)
- Your right...both sides devalue money; but another way to think about this is US printing causes an inflation of 3% and Chinese printing causes an inflation of 8% -- you could view this as US not printing and Chinese inflation of 5%.
Because one country is printing alot more than the other; you see the effects that he is talking about.(7 votes)
- Why is it that China alone appears to be able to manipulate the exchange rate? Why couldn't the United States counter the Chinese manipulation with some manipulation of their own so that the effect of the Chinese manipulation would be neutralized or at least minimized?(3 votes)
- China doesn't manipulate their exchange rates because they feel like it or because they're plotting against the US, its explained in the next video that by doing so the manipulation helps the US pay lower interests on the loans and so not go bankrupt. If we went bankrupt that would hit hard on China's economy.(10 votes)
- Does the US government have any control over which foreign banks buy US treasuries?(3 votes)
- -- Is the Chinese Central Bank limited to a US asset in this case? Why can't it buy a Korean asset in this example? 9:02(2 votes)
- It needs to be denominated in dollars. You can't buy a Korean asset using dollars, you have to buy it using won. And if China tried to convert the dollars to won, then that would bring back the problem of the dollar depreciating, because then the supply of dollars would go back up, and so the price of dollars would go down.
That is not to say that there aren't many non U.S. assets denominated in dollars. The dollar, after all, is the world's reserve currency. However, a U.S. asset would still be the best, because of the large market for U.S. assets.(3 votes)
- One thing I can not understand , why the Chinese Renminbi Yuan appreciate at overseas, at the SAME TIME there is high inflation in china? How can this situation last such a long time?(1 vote)
- High inflation is not necessarily a bad thing if it is accompanied by high economic growth. Usually the fastest growing countries have quite a bit of inflation, but the economy is growing even faster than inflation.
Theoretically if high inflation is accompanied by high economic growth, that should attract foreign investment. Those foreign investor's have to buy local currency in order to invest in local businesses. That should put upward pressure on the currency.(4 votes)
- Why does China want the safest asset for its dollars? Why don't they buy more stocks, diversified, and/or other currencies or assets? What does it do with US Treasuries? Do they have some active benefit to them (or just safety)? Why wouldn't they go for higher returns?(2 votes)
- US Treasuries are the most liquid assets held by CB's.(1 vote)
- Do you think the "Romney Plan" of initiating import duties on Chinese imports will help. I don't like Walmart anyway.(2 votes)
- Where else do all those dollars go aside from the treasuries.(1 vote)
- The dollars might go anywhere, since almost any bank in the world will accept dollar deposits. The People's Bank of China might loan the dollars to some U.S. banks, it might loan the dollars to some foreign central banks, since the central banks of the world need to keep some dollars as reserves.(2 votes)
- Why does not the US government do the same as what China has done?(1 vote)
- the US gov is printing money on its own. As a matter of fact, they have printed a lot of USD over the past few decades.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/images/2008/USMonetaryBase-nov08.png(2 votes)
Video transcript
Let's review everything we've
done in the last few videos and then take it a few
steps from there. So let's say we have a reality
that right now-- and this isn't the actual exchange rate,
but I'm just using these numbers because they're nice
simple numbers-- the current exchange rate is 10
yuan per U.S. $1. And now we're in a reality where
the Chinese Government, the Chinese Central Bank,
wants to keep this [? PEG'd, ?] so it wants to lock this. It wants to lock this exchange
rate right over here. But the reality is, more is
being sold to the U.S., more is being exported from China
to the U.S. than the other way around. And so that leads to this
weird dynamic that we've studied in the last
few videos. So this is China right here, and
then you have the United States right over here. And let's say at this exchange
rate right over here, you have goods coming from China to the
U.S. Actually, let me do it in that same magenta color. So these are Chinese goods,
and then we are paying for those Chinese goods in dollars
and those dollars are being sent to China. So let's say we pay in
this time period. Let's say it's a year. Let's say that $100 sent to
China for the goods, and this is really just a summary
of what we saw in the last few videos. And let's say, on the other side
of this equation, some goods are sent from
the U.S. to China. Some are exported, so U.S. goods
are exported to China, and then we sell them in China
and then we get some yuan in return that go back to
the United States. And, of course, the reality is
that the money seldom is actually sitting on a ship
going across the Pacific. It's all in these bank accounts
that can be wired back and forth. The actual exchanges are
essentially happening on the internet, not really in any
physical location, but this is a good way to visualize it. So the U.S. goods are being
sold in China and then the U.S. producer is going
to get yuan. And let's say for their goods,
they get 500 yuan. So if all of these people were
just convert, and you actually don't know what the equilibrium
price would be, because the demand changes
depending on what the price is in each of the countries, but
if you really wanted to convert these $100 that the
Chinese producer gets into yuan at 10:1, you would need--
so we're going to assume that this PEG is what at least the
Chinese Government wants. So you would need 1,000 yuan in
order to convert all of his $100 at 10 yuan per dollar. Now this producer, the U.S.
producer, only has-- let me do it in a different color and I
should put the quotes around needs, not around the yuan. Now this U.S. producer only has
500 yuan to convert into dollars, and we've seen
this multiple times. But I really want to reinforce
it about how these currencies would fluctuate. The demand for yuan is much
higher than supply for yuan. And we could do the exact same
argument for the dollar, that the demand for dollars
is much lower than the supply for dollars. At this exchange rate, if we
assumed a PEG, this would only be $50 that we need to convert
into, while there's $100 of actual supply. But let's just focus
on the yuan. They need 1,000 yuan at
this exchange rate. There's only 1,000 yuan that can
be converted into dollars. And if we had a floating
exchange rate, that would increase the demand for yuan,
and then this number would go down, or another way to view
it, either that number goes down or this number
over here goes up. You could say the yuan would
become more expensive, which means maybe it's 9 yuan per
dollar or 8 yuan per dollar, or it could go the other way. For 10 yuan, instead of $1,
you'd get $1.10 or $1.20 or $1.30, either way. Now, in order for this lock and
for this PEG to occur, we saw in the last video that
the Chinese Central Bank needs to intervene. Remember, where are the
excess dollars? They're over here. Let me make it clear. There's $100 over here
that need to be converted into yuan. We have 500 yuan over here that
needs to be converted into dollars. Now, the Chinese government
wants this $100 to be converted into 1,000 yuan. So what he does or what they
do is they say, OK, $50 of this $100 dollars can be
essentially traded for these 500 yuan. Let me draw a two-way arrow
there. $50 goes to the American producer and then the
500 yuan go to the Chinese producer in exchange
for that $50. Obviously, this isn't
coordinated. It's not like matchmaking. It's not like someone
said, hey, you give this money to them. But essentially, there will only
be $50 to convert into the yuan and then the other
$50 will go to the Chinese Central Bank. Let me draw the Chinese Central
Bank, and they will just print yuan and give
another 500 yuan. And this is exactly what
happened in the last video. I drew it a little
bit different. All I'm showing is to make up
for the lack of supply of yuan, they needed 1,000
yuan, there's only 500 yuan to convert. In order to make that up, the
Chinese Central Government prints the extra Chinese
currency and buys dollars with it. So it's essentially sucking up
the excess dollars, right? This was excess dollars right
over here so that the dollar does not weaken. It is sucking up extra dollars
so that the supply for dollars isn't so high that it weakens
or so that the yuan strengthens. And so that's the way
the Chinese can maintain the trade imbalance. They could continue to
export more goods than they are importing. Now, what is the effect
of this, though? And we saw this. In order to maintain this
currency PEG while there is this trade imbalance, the
Chinese Central Bank keeps printing yuan and they keep
accumulating dollars. And if they ever stop
accumulating dollars, so it's not like they can just hold the
dollars they have and the PEG will hold. If they ever stop accumulating
dollars, then the PEG will break down. They have to do this
every time period. They have to actively
participate in the market printing yuan and
buying dollars. They are doing it every day
to maintain the PEG. Not every day, maybe sometimes
when it won't fluctuate on their own, but if the yuan is
getting expensive, they actually maintain a range, and
they will buy dollars. So they're just accumulating
more and more of these dollars. And now this is where
it gets interesting. What does the Chinese Central
Bank do with that cash? Now, like anybody,
cash is useless. You're not getting any
interest on it. It's just paper. It allows you to buy other
things that could give you some income or could give
you some value. So what the Chinese Central
Bank does, it doesn't hold actual dollar bills. It goes and tries to buy
the safest U.S.- denominated asset it can. And another thing, not only does
it care about safety-- so it wants to go to
a safe asset. It wants to go to the safe
dollar-denominated asset, which means that you would buy
it in dollars, and if it produces interest, the interest
would be in dollars. And it's also doing this on a
massive, massive scale, in the hundreds of billions of dollars,
and actually the Reserve is in the trillions
of dollars, so it's on a massive scale. So they can't just go buy a
random company's stock, one that won't be safe, but also
they would just drive the price up to infinity if they
used this many dollars. So it has to be a very liquid
asset, one that has a very deep market where the people
trading in that market, it really is in the tens
and hundreds of billions of dollars. And there's really only one
asset that meets those requirements, and that's
U.S. Treasuries. And this isn't the only thing
they will do, but this is the great majority. So what the Chinese Central Bank
does with all of these excess dollars, it essentially
buys U.S. Treasuries. So it gives the dollars away. Well, not gives away, it sends
the dollars to the people who are holding the U.S. Treasuries,
and then it gets U.S. Treasuries in return. Now, as a bit of review, and
I've done a few videos on this, what are U.S.
Treasuries? U.S. Treasury bills and bonds
are loans to the Federal Government. So that's maybe how you
should view it. These are loans to the
Federal Government. These bonds, these Treasury
bonds or these treasury bills that they're getting, these
certificates, are essentially-- in fact, they
are-- IOUs from the U.S.A, not to get cheesy with the acronyms.
These are literally IOUs from the U.S. Government,
and the U.S. Government will pay interest. They are
essentially-- so just to make it all clear of what's going
on, they're printing money. They're accumulating dollars. They're using those dollars to
go out into either the open market or even directly from
the Treasury, from the U.S. Treasury, and they are buying
U.S. Treasuries, which essentially means that they are
lending this money to the U.S. Government. Now, I'll leave you there in
this video, and maybe you want to think about it a little
bit before you even watch the next one. But in the next one, we'll talk
a little bit about what that even means. What happens if you have this
big holder of U.S. dollars, this huge holder of U.S. dollars
going out there and buying Treasuries and being
willing to lend money to the U.S. Government? Think about it. And in particular, think about
what would happen to interest rates and what those low
interest rates' impact would have on the rest of
the U.S. economy and on debt in general.