Will the Ten ASEAN Countries Become the Second Euro Area?
The monetary cooperation between the ten ASEAN countries and China, Japan and South Korea (10+3) has finally taken a key step-the finance ministers meeting of relevant countries issued a joint communique on the 3rd, and decided to set up and operate the Asian regional foreign exchange reserve of120 billion US dollars by the end of this year. In this regard, some people think that it is a challenge to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a development in the direction of "Asian Monetary Fund"; Some people think that "Asian dollar" has just begun to take shape. In my opinion, this foreign exchange reserve pool is still weak in challenging the IMF, and "Asian dollar" is a long-term dream. The reality is that the RMB is strong and advanced. At present, the decision-making structure of the IMF has not changed substantially, and the United States, Europe and Japan still collectively enjoy 54.39% of the voting rights. At the G20 Summit, China, on behalf of the BRIC countries, initiated the voice of establishing a "super-sovereign national currency", but only to gain more voice in the IMF. Moreover, Japan is also a vested interest of the IMF, and developed countries agreed to increase the voice of emerging countries such as China at the two G20 summits. Therefore, the so-called "Asian Monetary Fund" (AMF) cannot challenge the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and it is not in the interests of China and Japan. As for "Asian dollar", it is an unreachable dream. On the one hand, Asian countries have different levels of economic development and political systems, and there are real interferences such as religion, territory and terrorism, so they do not have the conditions to establish the same currency; On the other hand, the euro was once a model of regional currency, but the financial crisis hit the euro zone quite hard, which led to a great discount on the charm of the currency. Then, the remaining Asian foreign exchange reserves are the strong appreciation of the RMB. At present, RMB internationalization has entered a new stage. From ASEAN to Japan and South Korea, to Russia and even South America, the number of countries and regions that have signed currency swap agreements with China has expanded unprecedentedly, reaching 700 billion US dollars. Especially in Southeast Asia, the RMB has become a "hard currency" in many countries, and its circulation efficiency is no less than that of the US dollar.