Lex专栏：人民币国际化提速Lex：Renminbi goes viral

“If you want to see capitalism in action,” said Milton Friedman, “go to Hong Kong.” Beijing is taking him up on that. As it seeks to broaden ownership of its currency, China is using the special administrative region as a giant petri dish. It wants to observe how this profoundly consumerist culture absorbs the renminbi as a medium of exchange, as a store of value and as a unit of account.

米尔顿•弗里德曼(Milton Friedman)曾经说过：“如果你想要了解运行中的资本主义，去香港吧。”中国政府听取了这一建议。为寻求扩大人民币的持有范围，中国正把香港特别行政区当作一个巨大的试验场。中国希望看一看，消费主义文化根深蒂固的香港，会如何把人民币作为一种交换媒介、价值贮藏手段和记账单位加以消化吸收。

Internationalisation had advanced slowly since November 2003, when the People’s Bank of China first agreed to provide clearing arrangements for renminbi business – exchange, remittance and ATM services – for holders of Hong Kong identity cards. Entering 2010, renminbi deposits in the city were just Rmb63bn, about 1.3 per cent of the total. There was little trade settled in renminbi and only a handful of offshore bonds for banks to invest in.

2003年11月，中国央行(PBOC)首次同意向香港居民提供人民币业务清算安排——包括兑换、汇款和ATM服务。自那时起，人民币国际化进程缓慢前行。2010年年初，香港人民币存款仅为630亿元，占总储蓄额的1.3%。以人民币结算的贸易少之又少，只有为数不多的几只离岸债券可供银行投资。

The pace picked up last year. Deposits of Rmb280bn in November were almost 5 per cent of the total, while almost 70,000 mainland companies are now eligible to participate in cross-border renminbi settlement. “Dim sum” bonds number 43, for a combined value of Rmb59bn. And the petri sample is beginning to spread: the Hong Kong Monetary Authority delivered its first lot of renminbi banknotes to Taipei in October.

去年，人民币国际化步伐开始加快。11月，人民币存款达到了2800亿元，占总储蓄额的5%，且近7万家大陆企业目前有资格参与跨境人民币结算。在香港发行、以人民币计价的“点心债券”总数达到了43只，规模为人民币590亿元。同时，试验样本正不断扩大：去年10月份，香港金管局(HKMA)向台北提供了首批人民币现钞。

These are still very early days. A meaningful threshold – say 3 per cent of China’s M2 – would require at least Rmb2,000bn in circulation offshore. But the catalysts for broader ownership of the People’s Currency are still intact: the dollar’s Triffin dilemma (that short-term domestic and long-term international economic objectives can conflict when a currency is also a reserve currency) and the potential erosion of the value of China’s $2,648bn in foreign-exchange reserves. Beijing, by degrees, is loosening its grip. Conventional wisdom was that it would take decades, rather than years, for the renminbi to become a third pillar of the global monetary system. Not any more.

目前还只是初期阶段，要达到像样的门槛——比如说占到中国M2货币供应量的3%——至少需要有2万亿元人民币在海外流通。但拓宽人民币持有面的动力丝毫没有改变：美元面临的特里芬难题(Triffin dilemma)（当一国货币成为储备货币后，短期国内经济目标和长期国际经济目标会相互冲突）以及中国2.648万亿美元外汇储备的潜在缩水风险。北京方面正逐步放松管制。以往的主流观点认为，人民币成为全球货币体系第三大支柱将需要几十年、而非几年的时间。这种观点已是昨日黄花。