SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Two-way volatility in the Chinese yuan has not changed despite the currency’s recent fast appreciation, while major economies are making shifts in their monetary policy stances, the state-owned China Securities Journal said on Thursday.
The front-page commentary came after China’s yuan traded both onshore and offshore strengthened to more than 3-1/2-year highs to breach the key psychological level of 6.35 per dollar on Wednesday.
Robust exports, foreign capital inflows and prudent monetary policy have provided support a stable yuan, the state media said.
“Towards the year-end, heavy FX settlement by companies may contribute to a fast yuan rally to a certain extent, but the impact of seasonal and transactional factors may not be sustainable,” the newspaper said.
Some market analysts and traders said authorities have appeared to show a higher tolerance for a strong yuan as policy divergence between China and other major economies could offset some of the yuan’s strength.
“We believe the People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) verbal intervention to contain the one-way RMB appreciation bias is possible, while the actual policy action such as a hike in FX (deposits) RRR will be less likely,” Ken Cheung, chief Asian FX strategist at Mizuho Bank said this week.
“Since July, the Federal Reserve had made a hawkish shift and ditched its view of transitory inflation. This will bring forward the end of Fed’s tapering and the rate hike cycle, draining the excessive USD liquidity in the onshore RMB market.”
While the major global central banks, including the U.S. Fed, are widely expected to tighten monetary policy, China’s central bank announced this week that it would cut the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for banks to bolster slowing economic growth.
(Reporting by Winni Zhou and Andrew Galbraith; editing by Richard Pullin)
