Like most other developing countries, China has long suffered from the constraints of foreign exchange gap and capital gap on economic development and the pressure of balance of payments deficit. Historically, since foreign smugglers sold opium to China on a large scale in the middle of Qing Dynasty, the deficit has been the normal state of China's trade balance. 189 1— 19; In the past 56 years, China's trade balance was only 1 year, and the rest 35 years were deficits. The total deficit in these 46 years was $3,026.7 million, accounting for 65,438+05% of China's total import ($65,438+0,972.52 billion) in the same period. Until 1980s, China's trade balance still showed a deficit pattern on the whole. During the period of 1980- 1989, China was in deficit except for two years, with a cumulative deficit of $44.29 billion. Accordingly, China's foreign exchange reserve assets have been very small. At the end of 1950, China's foreign exchange reserves were only $65,438+57 million; Until the end of 198 1 100 million, China's foreign exchange reserves never reached 1 100 million, but during 1950- 1980, the foreign exchange reserves were even less than 1 100 million.

However, since 1990s, China's balance of payments pattern has undergone tremendous changes, and the "double surplus" of current account (including trade in goods and services) and capital account has become the norm of China's balance of payments pattern. In terms of capital projects, China has been one of the developing countries that have used the most foreign direct investment in the world for many years, and it is also among the best in other countries. On the current account, since 1990, except 1993, China's trade balance has been in surplus for years, and the surplus is increasing day by day: since 1995, China's trade surplus exceeded 1065438+ in 2005. From June to June, 2006, China's trade surplus reached 6 1.44 billion US dollars.

At the same time, the scale of China's foreign assets, including foreign exchange reserves, has expanded rapidly, and China has developed from a country with net foreign liabilities to a country with net foreign assets. 198 1 At the end of the year, China's foreign exchange reserves exceeded the $65,438 billion mark for the first time, reaching $2,708 billion. 1990 broke through the10 billion USD mark for the first time, reaching1109.3 billion USD. /kloc-0 broke through the100 billion USD mark for the first time in 1996, reaching 105029 billion USD. In 2005, the annual increase exceeded $200 billion, and the balance of foreign exchange reserves reached $81887.2 billion at the end of the year. At the end of June 2006, China's foreign exchange reserves reached 94 1 1 billion US dollars. On May 25th, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange published the Statement of China's International Investment Position for the first time, which provided the balance data of China's foreign financial assets and liabilities at the end of 2004 and 2005. In the past two years, China's international investment position has shown the trend of external net assets, and the external net assets have increased substantially. In 2004, China's external net assets were US$ 654.38+020.3 billion, ranking sixth among countries with published data in the world. In 2005, China's external net assets soared by 1.39%, reaching US$ 287.5 billion, and its ranking in the world will be further improved. With the growth of international assets, the investment income items in China's balance of payments have changed from a deficit of $500 million in 2004 to a surplus of $654.38+0.06 billion in 2005.

The reason why China has a "double surplus" in current account and capital account for more than 10 years, which leads to the continuous growth of foreign exchange reserves and total foreign assets, is that China's foreign trade has developed so successfully that the rise of China has become the biggest change in the field of international trade since the end of 1970s. From 1978 to 2005, China's total import and export volume rose from $20.64 billion to 142 1906 billion, an increase of 67.89 times, with an average annual growth of 16.97%. Among them, the total export volume rose from $9.75 billion to $7.610.953 billion, an increase of 7710.5 times, with an average annual growth rate. Increase 17.52%. At present, China has been listed as the third largest trading country in the world. At the same time, attracted by China's rapidly expanding domestic market, unparalleled economic scale and scope, and constantly improving investment environment, foreign capital has poured into China, and China has become the best investment destination for international investors.

In addition, after the rise of "RMB appreciation theory" in 2002, the contribution of hot money inflow to "double surplus" and foreign exchange reserves is also quite prominent. Under normal circumstances, the flow of hot money aimed at gaining benefits from exchange rate changes should be included in capital and financial projects, but the capital account control well in China has not been fully opened, and many hot money masquerades as current account income and expenditure inflows. Therefore, it is difficult to give an accurate number of its scale, but many people think it should be tens of billions or even tens of billions a year.

"Double Surplus" and the Influence of Huge Foreign Assets

"Double surplus" and huge foreign exchange reserves and foreign assets have both positive and negative effects. Its positive impact first shows that China has completely got rid of the foreign exchange shortage that still puzzles the economic development of most developing countries. Secondly, the huge foreign exchange reserves have enhanced the stability of China's economy. . Support: Having such a huge foreign exchange reserve means that China has sufficient international payment capacity and will not be knocked down by the debt crisis or speculative currency attacks that suppress the exchange rate of its local currency. Although it seems far away for speculative currencies to attack and suppress the RMB exchange rate under the current expected environment of RMB exchange rate appreciation, the foreign exchange market has always been unpredictable. During the period of 1993- 1997, the pressure of RMB appreciation was no less than today. After the outbreak of the financial crisis in Southeast Asia, almost overnight, the RMB turned to bear huge depreciation pressure.

In addition to aggravating trade disputes, "double surplus" and huge foreign exchange reserves have also brought us many negative effects. By analyzing the composition and changes of China's international assets and liabilities in 2004 and 2005, we can see that the most prominent feature is that official reserves account for the vast majority of China's foreign assets, and the growth rate is faster than other assets, resulting in an increase in the proportion of official reserves in the total foreign assets. This feature has brought us the following negative consequences:

First of all, it makes China's government reserve management department bear too high and higher risks, and to a great extent, it falls into the dilemma that it is difficult to give consideration to both yield and safety.

Secondly, the growth of foreign exchange reserves has, to a considerable extent, made China lose the dominant position in monetary policy operation. Foreign exchange has long been the main channel for the issuance of basic money in China, and the growth rate of money supply has exceeded the expectations of the monetary authorities. At the beginning of 2005, the broad money supply (M; The growth target is 15%, and the actual implementation result is an increase of 17.57%, an increase of 2.94 percentage points over the end of 2004. Due to the rapid growth of foreign exchange reserves, in other words, the base currency invested through foreign exchange accounts has grown too fast. At present, there is a serious excess of liquidity in China, which leads to a sharp rise in asset prices. In the securities market, in the first half of 2006, the Shanghai Composite Index rose by 44.02% and the Shenzhen Component Index rose by 50.22%, ranking first in the global stock market. The stock markets of Russia and India, which ranked second and third, rose by 52.79% and 12.89% respectively. In the real estate market, the increase of real estate prices obviously exceeds the increase of the whole consumer price, and the increase of real estate prices in some key cities is even more alarming. From the real estate market to the stock market and futures market, facing the current "prosperity" scene of China's asset market, many commentators call it the "bubble" economic period of Japan in the 1980s, but at that time, Japan's domestic manufacturing industry had strong independent intellectual property technology and a solid manufacturing foundation. At present, China's manufacturing industry relies too much on foreign capital and lacks technology with independent intellectual property rights. The foundation is not solid, and it may not be appropriate to compare with Japan, but it is close to the "four little dragons" in East Asia and ASEAN countries in the 1990s.

Third, the huge foreign exchange reserves have increased the pressure of RMB exchange rate appreciation, and China is in a dilemma to some extent: to reduce the pressure of RMB appreciation and curb the growth of money supply, the People's Bank of China must increase the cash withdrawal or raise interest rates, but these operations will increase the pressure of RMB appreciation; If we increase the money supply or lower the interest rate in order to reduce the pressure of RMB appreciation, the already extremely loose money market will be worse, and the excessively loose money supply will stimulate the bubble expansion of the domestic asset market.

Fourth, in order to eliminate the negative impact of the excessive growth of the base currency caused by foreign exchange, the quasi-financial cost of the People's Bank of China's write-off intervention is increasing. The main tool for China People's Bank to write off in the open market is to absorb the increased base currency by issuing central bank bills. From April 23, 2003 to June 2006, the People's Bank of China issued 328 central bank bills with a face value of 7194.07 billion yuan, with maturities ranging from 3 months to s years. Most central bank bills are issued at a discount, and the amount of money returned is about 7 trillion yuan, and interest needs to be paid 654.38+0363 billion yuan. At present, the scale and frequency of issuing central bank bills are increasing. As of June 22, 2006, the People's Bank of China issued 43 three-month bills and 1 year bills in 2006, totaling 2168 million yuan, which is close to the issuance scale in 2005, accounting for13 of the total issuance since 2003.

The price of issuing central bank bills is the increasing interest expense of central bank bills. Up to now, central bank bills have to pay interest of 654.38+0363 billion yuan, of which 30.9 billion yuan has to be paid as of June 20, 2006, and 2.05 billion yuan, 654.38+02 billion yuan and 22.9 billion yuan respectively in the same period of 2003-2005 (excluding the interest of three-year central bank bills).

Fifth, the high fluctuation of exchange rate makes developing countries in a dilemma when managing foreign exchange reserves: since trade and investment between developing countries and a developed country often account for the vast majority of their foreign transactions, developing countries usually need to hold more of this country's currency for use at any time, but this is contrary to the requirement of diversifying foreign exchange reserves to spread risks. Although the financial market has invented many financial instruments to avoid risks, the highly volatile market will inevitably increase the cost of capital formation and cause economic inefficiency.

Sixth, because of the low rate of return on reserve assets, there is a problem of poor return on assets. In the past, the return on investment capital in developing countries was higher than that in developed countries. During 1994-2003, the return on investment capital in Latin America, East Asia (except Japan) and other developing countries were 12.9%, 14.7% and 1 1.3%, respectively, which were all of the developing countries. At present, China's "current account surplus has turned into 9 >; The combination of foreign exchange reserve assets and large-scale foreign direct investment inflows is essentially that China has replaced domestic high-yield assets with overseas low-yield assets. Therefore, China not only sacrifices the current national consumption, but also sacrifices the investment opportunities with higher returns. The low investment efficiency is recognized as the crux of China's investment at home and abroad.

Comprehensive balance, orderly adjust the "double surplus" and foreign assets.

It is impossible for any country to accumulate trade surplus and reserve assets endlessly without causing imbalance in the whole international trading system. In 2005, China's huge trade surplus and increasing asset reserves have been regarded as an important manifestation of global economic imbalance, which has aroused widespread concern at home and abroad. Because this pattern contains huge risks in the medium and long term, how to regulate it has become an important issue for China's economy. The Eleventh Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development clearly puts forward the goal of maintaining a basic balance of international payments. To curb the "double surplus" and the uncontrolled growth of foreign exchange reserves, on the one hand, it is necessary to reduce the growth rate of trade surplus, on the other hand, it is necessary to prevent the international income surplus from being completely transformed into official foreign exchange reserves through the new foreign exchange management system.

In reducing the growth rate of surplus, what we should do is not to curb export growth, but to promote import growth by starting domestic demand, especially consumer demand. The 11th Five-Year Plan has clearly put forward to "actively expand imports". While expanding import growth, we should also avoid buying a large number of primary products at high prices.

In terms of foreign exchange management system, one of the important reasons for the high foreign exchange reserves is China's compulsory foreign exchange settlement and sale system and the informal peg to the US dollar exchange rate system implemented in recent years. Under this exchange rate arrangement, enterprises can keep a small amount of foreign exchange income, and the rest must be remitted back to China and converted into RMB within the prescribed time limit, while the central bank must eat all the foreign exchange thrown by other market participants in the foreign exchange market, which has largely caused the passive growth of 9-C reserves. In this regard, we have introduced new market makers in the foreign exchange market, and the next step should be to gradually relax the compulsory foreign exchange settlement and sale system and change it to the willing foreign exchange settlement system.

The policy orientation of one-sided pursuit of trade surplus and reserve growth must be changed, and China's foreign trade must take the road of efficiency. In this process, we will also face the conflict between different policy objectives, and have to make a difficult choice between these important objectives: building China into an economic power and realizing the internationalization of the RMB, so as to avoid accumulating excessive trade surplus and foreign exchange reserves at a huge cost, but cutting the trade surplus and foreign exchange reserves too quickly in the short term will inevitably endanger our confidence in the RMB and hinder us from achieving our ultimate goal; It is necessary to completely change the structure of China's foreign trade commodities and finally realize our goal of "catching up". However, under the condition of a large number of surplus labor, excessively pursuing the upgrading of industrial structure and increasing the production and export of capital and technology-intensive products will inevitably reduce employment opportunities, which is not conducive to more members of society to share the fruits of economic growth. Among the main goals of economic growth, full employment, price stability, foreign economic balance and domestic industrial structure upgrading, we can think that the goal of restraining trade surplus and foreign exchange reserve growth (that is, foreign economic balance) is unified with the goal of price stability, but there is a certain conflict between the efforts to restrain trade surplus and foreign exchange reserve growth and the goals of economic growth, full employment and industrial structure upgrading.

In addition, the United States and Europe are our main trading partners and the largest source of trade surplus, and China's export performance to them depends to a considerable extent on its internal macroeconomic situation. In 2006, the economic situation of the United States and Europe is optimistic, and the overall scale of their import and trade deficits is unlikely to decrease significantly in the short term. If we blindly pursue to curb the growth of the trade surplus, the result is likely to be the loss of the market that we could have won, and other countries will have an opportunity, and the intensity of trade protectionism in the United States and Europe will not be significantly reduced, thus making us lose both sides.

In terms of industrial structure objectives, we are concerned about whether foreign trade can maximize the pulling effect on domestic economic growth. By analyzing the respective growth trends of processing trade and general trade, as well as the development trend of domestic value-added rate of processing trade, we can see that China's foreign trade efficiency is showing a positive improvement trend, which is embodied in the following three aspects: First, the general trade mode shows signs of recovery; Secondly, the growth rate of internal processing under the processing trade mode continues to far exceed the growth rate of incoming processing; Third, the domestic value-added rate of processing trade tends to increase. In the long run, the above development trend of China's trade mode since 2005 is conducive to improving China's position in the international division of labor system and the sustained, stable and coordinated development of China's national economy; However, in the short to medium term, the above development trend will further promote the growth of trade surplus. Although we should not blindly pursue the growth of trade surplus, we also need to curb the pressure of trade disputes and RMB appreciation, and reduce the burden of write-off intervention by the People's Bank of China, but our means of pursuing the above short-term and medium-term goals should not inhibit the above development trend of China's trade pattern, thus damaging our long-term development goals.

In view of this, at least in 2006, in the pursuit of foreign economic balance, we should not simply curb the growth of export and trade surplus, but reduce the capital account surplus and adjust the foreign exchange market and foreign exchange management system so that all surpluses will not be converted into official foreign exchange reserves. To this end, first, strengthen supervision, reduce the inflow of hot money, continue to moderately expand the freedom of capital outflow, orderly reduce the control of capital outflow, and promote the development of foreign direct investment; Second, we must make a transition to the willingness to settle foreign exchange.