The China's Exchange Rate Policy to Export Competition

Purpose - The purpose of this paper was to analyze the Chinese government's announcement of the RMB's appreciation on July 1, 2010, and its aim was to ascertain whether the appreciation has affected Chinese export prices by empirically measuring the degree of the exchange rate pass-tough on those prices. Research design, data, and methodology - Using 73 HS trade categories with cross-industry and time-series data, the panel estimation of a fixed-effects model has been applied to measure the degree and stability of any exchange rate pass-through effects. The estimation results show that the export prices of most trade categories were affected by the exchange rate changes. The pass-through effect was generally small, at about -0.485, and statistically significant in most export prices. Results - The empirical results indicate that China would lose its advantage and competitiveness in export if the RMB were appreciated continuously and rapidly because its export goods would no longer operate under strong monopolistic competition. Conclusions - The implications for China's exchange rate policy suggest that it would be better for the RMB to appreciate slowly and gradually rather than radically. It is clear that it would be allow the capital free flow in Chinese overall economic interest to reduce the continuous appreciation pressure on the currency and pave the way for improvements in export distribution competitiveness.