China’s Not-So-New Currency Policy

Derek Scissors / June 20, 2010

Beijing finally made a move on exchange rates, probably. Assuming there is some action to go with the People’s Bank of China’s stilted language, two critical errors are being made in the international response.

The first concerns the nature of the change. The one-line summary, in China and elsewhere, is that the PRC has broken the peg of the yuan to the U.S. dollar. Or re-broken it, since the peg is said to have been broken in July 2005, then reestablished in July 2008.

This view is badly mistaken. The yuan peg to the dollar was not ended in July 2005, it was simply loosened. There is no evidence in the yuan’s movement against other currencies that the peg was broken, or even dented. (more…)