中国外汇储备的两难An embarrassment of riches, albeit ‘unreal’

At the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the organisation responsible for man-  aging China’s $2,850bn in foreign exchange reserves, a multi- coloured globe sits in the middle of a large trading floor.

在负责管理中国2.85万亿美元外汇储备的外汇管理局(SAFE)，一个五彩地球仪被摆放在一个大型交易大厅的中央。

For those suspicious that China harbours mercantilist, zero-sum designs on global resources, it is an ornament worthy of a Bond villain’s lair. In the US, in particular, officials from across the political spectrum have expressed concern that – in any future confrontation – Beijing could leverage its position as the single largest foreign owner of US Treasury securities.

对于那些怀疑中国在全球资源上怀揣重商主义、视其为零和游戏的人而言，这堪比邦德(Bond)电影中坏蛋老巢里的装饰品。尤其是在美国，各界官员均表达了一种担忧，即不管未来发生何种对抗，北京都可能利用其作为美国国债最大外国持有者的地位讨价还价。

In a March 2009 conversation with Kevin Rudd, Australia’s then prime minister, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, hinted at that anxiety.

在2009年3月与澳大利亚前总理陆克文(Kevin Rudd)的一次会谈中，美国国务卿希拉里•克林顿(Hillary Clinton)就曾暗示了这种担忧。

“How do you deal toughly with your banker?” she asked in a conversation about China, according to a diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website.

揭秘网站维基解密(WikiLeaks)泄露的一份外交电报显示，她曾在一次有关中国的交谈中问道，“你怎么能对你的银行家强硬呢？”

But while some Chinese leaders do see the pile of reserves as a source of strength and pride, for others it is a double-edged sword.

然而，尽管一些中国领导人的确视外汇储备增长为实力的体现并引以为豪，另一些人则认为，这是一把双刃剑。

“China’s foreign exchange reserves cannot be regarded as a tool of financial power,” Xiao Gang, chairman of state-owned Bank of China, argued in a recent essay. “The reserves are actually a manifestation of the country’s balance sheet and not real wealth.”

国有的中国银行(BoC)董事长肖钢在最近的一篇文章中写道：“中国的外汇储备不应被视为金融力量的一个工具，因为外汇储备实际上只是一国资产负债表的体现，而不是真正的财富。”

Mr Xiao was alluding to a process that, according to detractors, is simply a variant of the US Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing. Under QE the Fed prints money to buy government bonds in an effort to push down long-term interest rates and stimulate the economy.

肖钢暗示的，是一种被批评者称为美联储(Fed)定量宽松政策“变种”的程序。在定量宽松政策下，美联储印刷钞票购买政府债券，以压低长期利率、刺激经济。

In China, the central bank prints money to buy the foreign exchange earnings generated by the country’s exporters. While the motive is different – to peg the renminbi to the dollar at what many believe is an undervalued rate – the result is the same.

在中国，央行印刷钞票并购买本国出口商创造的外汇收入。尽管它的动机不同（旨在维持人民币对美元汇率——而许多人认为这一汇率处在被低估的水平），但结果却一样。

As Mr Xiao puts it, the policy comes “at the cost of pouring huge amounts of base money into the domestic market”. Unlike the Fed, however, the People’s Bank of China must try to limit the inflationary impact. It issues bonds in an effort to mop-up, or “sterilise”, the liquidity. Beijing has also introduced a series of policies aimed at reducing future inflows into the reserves. Exporters, for example, have been allowed to keep more foreign exchange earnings overseas.

正如肖钢所指出的那样，施行这种政策的“代价是向国内市场注入巨额基础货币”。然而，与美联储不同，中国央行必须努力限制这一政策带来的通胀影响。它通过发行债券，以吸收或“冲销”流动性。中国政府还出台了一系列政策，以减缓未来外汇储备的增长。例如，政府已允许出口商在海外留存更多的外汇收入。

And measures aimed at promoting internationalisation of the renminbi – by allowing the currency to be used for international settlement or, more recently, for overseas investments and acquisitions – are also intended to slow the growth of the reserves. But restricting capital inflows remains an enormous challenge. China’s forex reserves grew by about $450bn last year. After reaching the trillion-dollar mark in late 2006, it took just another two and a half years for the reserves to swell to two trillion.

此外，一些推动人民币国际化的措施——例如，允许人民币被用于国际结算，或更近的，用于海外投资与收购——也意在试图放缓外汇储备的增长。但限制资本流入仍是一项巨大挑战。中国外汇储备去年增长了约4500亿美元。在2006年末突破万亿大关后，外汇储备仅仅用了两年半时间，就飙升至了两万亿。

“A country needs foreign exchange reserves to pay for its imports or to guarantee it can pay its external debt, but China long ago reached the point where it had sufficient reserves,” says Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University. “Beyond that the value of reserves is quite limited and the costs rise as the reserves do.”

北京大学金融学教授迈克尔•佩蒂斯(Michael Pettis)表示：“一个国家需要外汇储备来购买进口产品、担保它可以偿还外债，但中国很久以前就到达了储备充足的水平。在这个水平之上的外汇储备，价值就变得相当有限，且规模越大，成本也越高。”

Destinations for liquidity

寻找流动性好的投资机遇

China struggles to find reliable, liquid investment opportunities for its embarrassment of riches. Reluctantly, it has had to rely on the US Treasury market as a safe haven, thus subsidising America’s cost of capital and fuelling the global imbalances and asset inflation that helped precipitate the global financial crisis.

中国很难为其“尴尬的”财富找到可信的、流动性好的投资机遇。尽管不情愿，但它还是不得不依赖美国国债市场作为避风港。这会帮助降低美国的资本成本，并且加剧引发全球金融危机的全球失衡与资产通胀。

“Despite China’s desire to break out of reliance on US Treasuries, in particular, there just isn’t another market that can absorb the level of inflows currently going into the Chinese reserves,” says Eswar Prasad, a trade policy professor at Cornell University and former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division. “[The reserves] are a serious political problem for the Chinese leadership both internationally, where they are seen as evidence China is manipulating its currency, and domestically, where they are seen as the nation’s wealth and so any capital loss on the portfolio is politically unacceptable.”

美国康奈尔大学(Cornell University)贸易政策教授、国际货币基金组织(IMF)前中国区主任埃斯瓦•普拉萨德(Eswar Prasad)表示：“尽管中国特别想打破对美国国债的依赖，但没有其它任何一个市场可以吸收当前流入中国外汇储备的资金流。不管是在国际上还是在国内，对中国领导层而言，（外汇储备）都是一个严肃的政治问题——在国际上，它们被视为中国正在操纵货币的证据；在国内，它们被视为国家财富，因此其投资组合若出现任何资本损失，在政治上都是不可接受的。”

Some Chinese leaders nevertheless promote the idea that Beijing can use its reserves for political gain. They have publicly promised to buy unspecified amounts of sovereign debt from countries in the eurozone crisis. Although Chinese officials have never explicitly presented these debt purchases as conditional, they have hinted that Europe should in return lift its arms embargo (imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre) and recognise China as a market economy, which would strengthen its position in disputes moderated by the World Trade Organisation.

但一些中国领导人还是在宣扬一种观点，即北京可以利用外汇储备获取政治利益。他们已公开承诺，会购买一些身陷危机的欧元区国家的主权债务（未透露规模）。尽管中国官员从未明确表示过购买这些债券是有条件的，但他们暗示，作为回报，欧洲应取消它的对华军售禁令（1989年天安门广场动乱之后实施），并承认中国的市场经济地位。后者将在世界贸易组织(WTO)纠纷解决机制中，为中国增加砝码。

But with only about a quarter of China’s foreign exchange reserves invested in euro-denominated assets – and given Beijing’s desire to reduce its reliance on dollar assets – European officials say privately that China is not in a position to cajole the EU.

但鉴于中国仅有约四分之一的外汇储备投资于欧元计价资产，加上北京希望减轻对美元资产的依赖，欧洲官员私下表示，中国还劝诱不了欧盟。

“Beijing is clearly trying to make virtue out of necessity – the necessity being the fact they have no choice but to keep investing their reserves into big liquid developed markets,” says Mr Prasad. “Rather than admitting they have no choice, they’re trying to make it seem as if they can leverage reserves for political gain . . . In the end it’s not a very credible strategy.”

普拉萨德表示：“北京明显正在试图将不得不做的事，装成是出于高尚动机才做的——不得不做的事，是指事实上他们没有选择，只能不断地将他们的外汇储备投资于流动性好的大型发达市场。他们不是承认自己没有选择，而是努力使这一切看上去像他们可以利用外汇储备获取政治利益……说到底这不是一个令人信服的策略。”