The rise of the renminbi and what it means for forex markets Chinese authorities have ambitious plans to "internationalize" the renminbi, transforming it from a tightly controlled domestic legal tender into a global currency for international trade, held by both private and public sector asset managers. The Offshore Renminbi examines this impending currency revolution, outlining why the emergence of China as a major economic power will likely soon be matched by a transformation of the renminbi's role in the global financial system. It explains how new markets for "offshore" renminbi are developing outside mainland China since the country is not yet ready to fully open up its economy to international capital flows, and the regulations that govern them. The potential growth for the renminbi market is vast, thanks to China's role in the global trading community. The early stages of the internationalization effort were small-scale, but momentum has greatly increased over the past 18 months, making this book more relevant than ever. These developments offer new opportunities (and challenges) for corporate treasurers and investors, as China's profound economic success and growing prominence in global trade may transform offshore renminbi into a new global reserve currency and a legitimate competitor to the U.S. dollar. Explores how the "internationalization" of the renminbi is likely to yield a new global currency to rival the U.S. dollar Examines "offshore" renminbi and the host of new financial markets they have created, from a spot FX market to Dim Sum bonds in Hong Kong Covers broad themes of interest to general readers and policymakers, as well as more detailed issues of practical and direct importance to corporate treasurers and investors The Chinese government has ambitious plans to make the renminbi a global currency. The Offshore Renminbi explains the complexities of this strategy and the dramatic implications for the global FX markets.

The offshore renminbi (CNH) exchange rate is the exchange rate of the Chinese currency transacted outside China. We study the CNH exchange rate dynamics and its links with onshore exchange rates. Using a specialized microstructure dataset, we find that CNH is significantly affected by its order flow and limit-order imbalance. The offshore CNH exchange rate has an increasing impact on the onshore rate, and significant predictive power for the official RMB central parity rate. The CNH order flow also affects the onshore RMB exchange rate and the central parity rate. The interactions between variables are likely to be time-varying. Publication keywords: foreign exchange market microstructure, order flow, limit-order imbalance, CNH, CNY, central parity rate.

Over the past two decades, China's robust economic performance has propelled it to the world stage. At the same time, the world has increasingly scrutinized China's economic policies and activities. One of the hotly contested issues is China's foreign exchange rate policy. China's current reform and modernization policies to convert its centrally planned economy towards a market-driven one could hardly draw on experiences of other countries.This book provides a succinct and up-to-date account of China's exchange rate policy including the currency undervaluation debate and the internationalization of its currency. It begins with a brief history of the modern China's foreign exchange rate policy. In particular, it highlights the three Chinese policy characteristics; namely, independence, controllability and practicability, and graduality. This prologue helps to interpret China's policy on its currency, the renminbi (RMB); including its recent initiatives to promote the international use of its currency.The book covers the basic theoretical and empirical issues that are relevant for determining the equilibrium value of the RMB exchange rate and, hence, its degree of misalignment. Then it evaluates the controversy surrounding the RMB valuation debate, and highlights the sensitivity of empirical estimates of the degree of misalignment to alternative presumptions.The book also examines the timely issues related to China's recent efforts in promoting the use of its currency in the global financial market. After describing the background of China's recent efforts to internationalize the RMB, the book a) discusses the main promotional policies, including the recent Qianhai project and Shanghai Free Trade Zone initiative, b) evaluates the current status of the offshore RMB market, the level of international use of the RMB and the admission to the SDR basket, and c) assesses the future prospects of the RMB to be a global currency.

In line with the deepening of the derivative foreign-exchange market in Hong Kong, we recover risk-neutral probability densities for future US dollar/offshore renminbi exchange rates as implied by exchange rate option prices. The risk-neutral densities (RND) approach is shown to be useful in analyzing market sentiment and risk aversion in the renminbi market. We include a forecasting exercise that confirms market participants were able to forecast the shape of the actual densities correctly for short horizons, even if their exact location could not be determined.

Offshore use of the renminbi expanded rapidly in Hong Kong SAR as China sought to develop an international role for its currency while maintaining capital controls. This prompts two questions addressed in this paper: How far advanced is renminbi internationalization? And, what role does Chinese capital account liberalization play? The first is addressed by testing the extent of integration of offshore and onshore markets for the renminbi using a Threshold Autoregression (TAR) model and finds that there are substantial unexploited arbitrage opportunities. A VAR model is used to indentify factors contributing to this limited market integration and finds that capital controls and shifts in global market sentiment explain much of the divergence in onshore and offshore renminbi exchange rates. To address the second question, the paper shows how capital account measures have been used to promote offshore use of the renminbi more actively in the wake of the global financial crisis, but that this was done asymmetrically with controls on inflows eased to a greater extent than on outflows. It concludes that a more balanced liberalization process will sustain progress in renminbi internationalization.

The offshore currency market is a foundation of offshore bond market, helping well-established corporations in global financing. Following the global financial tsunami in 2008 and European debt crisis in 2009-2011, this book aims to document the latest issues, challenges, trends and thoughts relating to offshore currency markets in Asia.