A Study on the Financial Service Negotiations in the Korean-Chinese Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) with Respect to RMB Internationalization

위안화 국제화를 고려한 한·중 FTA 금융서비스 협상 전략에 관한 연구

Purpose - This paper analyzes the influence of the RMB internationalization on the KRW/dollar exchange rate using an autoregressive distributed lag model. Comparing the parameter estimators from the sample period before and after the global financial crisis, we found that the RMB/dollar exchange rate has increasingly become more influential on the KRW/dollar exchange rate. Moreover, for the past several years, the Chinese government has actively utilized the financial service FTA negotiation as a measure for the RMB internationalization. This paper simultaneously considers RMB internationalization and financial service negotiations in the Korean-Chinese FTA. The purpose of this paper is to explicitly suggest a direction for the financial service negotiations in the Korean-Chinese FTA considering the effects of RMB internationalization. Research design, data, and methodology - The research plan of this paper has two parts. First, for an empirical study, this paper uses the daily exchange rate of the U.S. dollar against the currencies of the ASEAN5, Taiwan,and Korea. By using an autoregressive distributed lag model, this paper studies the influence of the change in the RMB/dollar exchange rate on changes in the local currency/dollar exchange rate in seven economies neighboring China. Our sample periods are 06/2005 - 07/2008 and 06/2010 -02/2013. During these periods, China was under the multi-currency basket system. We exempted the period of 08/2008 - 05/2010 from the analysis because there was nearly no RMB/dollar exchange rate fluctuation during those months. Second, after analyzing the recent financial service liberalizations and deregulations in China, we recommend a direction for the financial service negotiations in the Korean-Chinese FTA. In the past several years,the main Chinese financial policy agenda has surrounded the RMB internationalization. Therefore, it is crucial to understand this in the search for strategies for the financial service negotiations in the Korean-Chinese FTA. This paper employs an existing literature survey and examines the FTA protocols in its research methodology. Results and Conclusions - After the global financial crisis, the Chinese government wanted to break away from the dollar influence and pursued independent RMB internationalization in order to continue the growth and stability of its economy. Hence, every neighboring economy of China has been strategically impacted by RMB internationalization. Nevertheless, there is little empirical study on the influence of RMB internationalization on the KRW/dollar exchange rate. This paper is one of the few studies to analyze this problem comprehensively. By using a relatively simple estimation model, we can confirm that the coefficient of the RMB/dollar exchange rate has become more significant, except in the case of Indonesia. Although Korea is not under the multi-currency basket system but under the weakly controlled floating exchange rate system, its coefficient appears as large as that of the ASEAN5. This is the basis of the currency cooperation that has grown from the expansion of trade between the two countries. These empirical results suggest that the Korean government should specifically consider the RMB internationalization in the Korean-Chinese FTA negotiations.