Press Conference of RMB Internationalization Report 2015 in New York
2015-10-12 IMI
The conference was chaired by Prof. Ben Shenglin. In the opening speech, he made a point that RMB Internationalization is not just a Chinese initiative, it is an opportunity for the global community and therefore requires the joint undertaking of both China and the rest of the world to have the common understanding, acceptance and adoption of RMB as an alternative complementing the existing global financial and monetary system. According to Prof. Ben, China is the largest trade nation, a dominant producer in many industries, and also has the largest foreign exchange reserve that we are still actively looking for good ways to deploy. While Chinese RMB, despite some encouraging progress over the past few years, represent a less than 3% market share, measured in its composite usage in trade, finance and reserve currencies. Therefore RMB Internationalization will be a complex process and long journey as well. But as the old Chinese saying: “a journey of one thousand miles starts with the first footstep”, we are confident that what we have done and are doing today will represent more than the first footstep.
The second session of the conference themed “RMB exchange rate, capital account liberalization, SDR and the global reserve system” began with the keynote speech by Mr. Anoop Singh on “RMB as an international currency”. During the speech, he distinguished the roles RMB will play as a reserve currency and as an international currency. He also put great emphasis on the stability of economy in the period of reforming. When it came to the two criterions raised by IMF for including one currency into the SDR basket, Anoop Singh discussed the present position of RMB, and pointed out that it would significantly influence the internationalization of RMB that whether the trade between mainland of China and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan is viewed as cross-border trade instead of domestic trade. Though RMB undoubtedly meets the requirement of IMF for export quota, it is still up to the IMF to assess the free usability of RMB.
The press conference has been well received by the local scholars and delegates from the industry with the research output of IMI widely recognized. According to Dr. Song Ke, this is the fourth year for the IMI to release the RMB Internationalization Report, before which the reports had been released in Beijing, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, London and Almaty, etc. Being the first time to hold the press conference in the United States, IMI will keep actively participating in international exchange and cooperation, releasing the reports in world finance centers, making the research on RMB internationalization go global.
