South Asia Investor Review

A series of Chinese government policy changes are enabling Asian companies to settle trades with their Chinese counterparts in renminbi, according to Risk.net website . And increased intra-Asian trading volume may lead Beijing to also consider allowing other trade-related insurance and derivatives denominated in renminbi to be done offshore, according to bankers and regulators in Hong Kong. Although it is still very early, the Chinese move aims for its currency to join the US dollar and EU's Euro as a major trade and reserve currency. A key hurdle that the Chinese need to cross is the full convertibility of the yuan into other major currencies. Beijing is beginning to get around the convertibility issues by signing currency swap agreements with several of its trading partners, including Argentina, Indonesia, India, Japan, Pakistan, Russia and South Korea. The agreement requires that the central banks of the partner countries have adequate deposits of each others’ currencies. These...

It is estimated that the continuing trade surpluses for years have helped China amass a whopping two trillion US dollars in dollar-denominated assets. Last year alone, China added US$450 billion to its reserves at a rate of over a billion dollars a day. About half of the Chinese US dollar-based assets are in the form of US treasury bonds that fund the ballooning US deficits. Gao Xiqing, president of the China Investment Corporation, recently told James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly, "Be nice to the countries that lend you money". Gao was clearly hinting at this new reality of " balance of financial terror" shifting in China's favor. If history is any guide, the power of the lender over debtor nations is not just theoretical. The key moment when the world leadership passed from Britain to the United States came during the Suez crisis of the 1950s as a result of Britain's large WWII debt owed to the United States. When Britain, France and Israel invaded ...

There are mounting global concerns about sharp decline in the value of US dollar against the euro and other major world currencies. Not only has it fueled inflation with higher prices of basic commodities such as food grains, oil and metals but it has also diminished the value of the reserves held in dollars by the vast majority of central banks around the world. These issues are giving to rise to a discussion of how long can the US dollar remain as the currency of choice for central bankers. To understand this discussion, let's look at the history of reserve currencies in the past and the current situation with global trade. When the 20th century began, the U.S. was already the world's biggest economy, but the British pound still accounted for nearly two-thirds of official foreign-exchange reserves held by the world's central banks. The dollar didn't become the dominant currency until after World War II. Even then, some commodities still traded in pounds: The London su...