The turbulence in the Chinese stock market — where heavy support operations by the Chinese authorities seemed to be turning the tide up to this week’s renewed weakness — is an unpromising backcloth for one of Beijing’s priorities in the international economic field.

对于中国政府在国际经济领域的首要任务之一来说，国内股市的剧烈波动是指望不上的。中国当局的强力托市举措似乎一度在令股市止跌回升——直到上周再次疲软。

China’s aim is to bring the renminbi into the special drawing right, the currency unit of the International Monetary Fund, under a review process due to be concluded at the end of the year. Introducing the Chinese money into the SDR — joining the dollar, euro, yen and sterling — could enhance the SDR’s attractiveness for borrowers and investors. But, as an artificial currency that needs to be “decomposed” into its parts before it can be traded on financial markets, the SDR has never caught investors’ favour.

中国的目标，是令人民币能够在经过审查后被纳入特别提款权(SDR)——即国际货币基金组织(IMF)使用的货币单位。这一审查过程将于今年底得出结论。将人民币纳入SDR，从而加入美元、欧元、日元和英镑的行列，可能会提高SDR对借款方和投资者的吸引力。不过，作为一种需“分解”成其组成货币，才能在金融市场中交易的人为货币，SDR从未受到投资者青睐。

For the SDR to gain momentum in borrowing and investment, it would need to become a currency in its own right, similar to the development of the European currency unit, used in the bond markets from the late 1970s onwards. The Ecu’s bond deployment accelerated in the 1990s as the countdown to the transformation into the euro got under way. An analogous journey for the SDR looks unlikely.

与欧洲货币单位的发展类似，要想令SDR货币能够在借贷和投资活动中得到更广泛应用，它还需要成为一种依靠自身本领的货币。从上世纪70年代末以来，欧洲货币单位就一直用于债券市场。而在上世纪90年代，在向欧元转型的过程处于倒计时之际，对欧洲货币单位债券资产的配置才出现了加速。相比之下，SDR看起来却不太可能出现类似变化。

A more likely bond market beneficiary of a wider SDR would be the renminbi itself. In the short run, a positive decision on the SDR and the renminbi would probably prompt a further $100bn worth of official buying of renminbi-denominated assets. Longer term, the figure would be much greater — raising the question of how supply of good-quality renminbi assets could be increased to meet this extra demand.

如果SDR货币得到更广泛地应用，债券市场中更有可能的受益者将是人民币自身。从短期来说，对SDR和人民币的积极评价，可能会促使官方渠道多买入价值1000亿美元的以人民币计价的资产。从更长时期来说，这一数字将会大得多，从而引发如何才能增加高品质人民币资产的供应量、以满足这种额外需求的问题。

By contrast to the artificial SDR, the renminbi is becoming much more real for investors around the world. A decision on the Chinese currency’s inclusion in the SDR will depend on the IMF’s assessment of the renminbi’s free usability on world financial markets and in official transactions. Although Beijing is progressively making the renminbi more convertible for capital transactions, the Chinese authorities are keeping capital controls in place, for fear that undue liberalisation would harm financial stability. The vast share purchases by the state-owned China Securities Finance Corporation, along with restrictions on share selling implemented to stem the June market rout, might be seen as interfering with the renminbi’s usability.

与人为建立的SDR货币不同的是，人民币对全世界的投资者正变得更加真实。将人民币纳入SDR的决定，将取决于IMF对人民币在全球金融市场和官方交易中自由可用程度的评估。虽然中国政府正在大力提高资本项目下人民币的可兑换性，但由于担心过度自由化会伤害金融稳定性，中国当局仍在实施资本管制。为阻止6月份股市的暴跌，国有的中国证券金融公司(China Securities Finance Corporation)买入大量股票的行为，以及中国政府对股票抛售的限制，都可能被视为干扰人民币可用性的行为。

Approval for renminbi inclusion would be of enormous symbolic value to Beijing, reinforcing its effort to turn the renminbi into an international hard currency and to challenge western dominance of global monetary governance. More specifically, it could trigger a large shift of global institutional assets into renminbi.

人民币被批准纳入SDR，对中国政府来说将有着巨大的象征意义。中国政府正努力将人民币变为全球硬通货，挑战西方在全球货币治理中的统治地位。人民币被纳入SDR，会令中国政府的上述努力得到加强。更具体地说来，它或将引发全球机构资产向人民币的大规模迁移。

The renminbi’s sharp rise on world currency markets — up 13 per cent in real (inflation-adjusted) trade-weighted terms over the past 12 months — is a key factor, explaining why the IMF now says the currency is fairly valued internationally. Already, the renminbi has become de facto a reserve currency. On rough calculations, there may be about $100bn of renminbi reserves in central bank holdings, about half the total held in Canadian and Australian dollars, according to IMF estimates. On this basis, an SDR inclusion decision could spark a further $100bn worth of renminbi purchases by central banks. This is not a huge figure compared with the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum estimate of global official sector assets of $30tn, and daily foreign exchange turnover estimated by the Bank for International Settlements at $5.3tn. But shifts of this nature would be a milestone, especially if such movements follow in the private sector.

人民币在全球外汇市场的急剧升值也是个重要因素，解释了为何IMF如今会表示人民币在国际上得到了正确估值。过去12个月内，人民币经通胀调整后的实际贸易加权汇率上升了13%。目前，人民币已成为一种事实上的储备货币。根据IMF的估计，在各国央行持有的资产中，粗略估算大约有1000亿美元的人民币储备资产，约为加拿大元和澳元储备资产总量的一半。而将人民币纳入SDR的决定，可能会在此基础上，进一步促使各国央行再买入价值1000亿美元的人民币资产。目前，官方货币与金融机构论坛(Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum)对全球官方部门的资产规模估计为30万亿美元，而国际清算银行(Bank for International Settlements)对全球每日外汇成交量的估计则为5.3万亿美元。与它们相比，1000亿美元并不算个大数字。然而，人民币这一属性上的改变会成为一个里程碑，尤其是如果私人部门也随即采取同样举措的话。

The overall renminbi bond market, including public and private sector debt, is estimated at about Rmb35.9tn, says Goldman Sachs, the third-largest after the US and Japan. There may be a shortage of renminbi-denominated investable assets for world central banks in coming years. Chinese government borrowers are unlikely to generate significant issuance in coming years. So part of the demand from worldwide central banks may have to come from renminbi issuance by top-rated agencies such as the World Bank as well as sovereign governments, where the British government gave a lead last year with a Rmb3bn issue.

高盛(Goldman Sachs)表示，包括公共部门债券和私营部门债券在内，人民币债券市场的总体规模估计为大约35.9万亿元人民币，是仅次于美国和日本的全球第三大债市。今后几年内，对于全球央行来说，可能会出现以人民币计价的可投资资产短缺的现象。今后几年，中国政府部门的借款方不太可能发行很多债券。因此，全球央行需求的一部分，可能将不得不由世界银行(World Bank)及各主权政府等评级最高的机构发行的人民币债券来满足。其中，英国政府去年带头发行了30亿元人民币的债券。

If the renminbi enters the SDR, expect more such bonds from western governments in coming years.

如果人民币被纳入SDR，预计今后几年西方国家政府将发行更多此类债券。