英语翻译人民币“入蓝”.docx

The yuan joins the SDR人民币“入蓝”Maiden voyage软妹币的“第一次”PASSING through the Suez Canal became easier earlier thisyear, thanks to an expansion completed in August. Now it is about to become alittle bit more complicated. Transit fees for the canal are denominated inSpecial Drawing Rights, a basket of currencies used by the InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF) as its unit of account. This week the IMF decided toinclude the yuan in the basket from next year, joining the dollar, the euro,the pound and the yen.2.If lots of things were priced in SDRs, the IMF’s decisionwould have forced companies around the world to buy yuan-denominated assets assoon as possible, to hedge their exposure. That would have prompted China’scurrency to strengthen dramatically. But few goods or services are priced inSDRs. Instead, admission to the currency club is significant mainly for itssymbolism: the IMF is lending its imprimatur to the yuan as a reservecurrency—a safe, liquid asset in which governments can park theirwealth. Indeed, far from setting off a groundswell of demand for the yuan,the IMF’s decision may pave the way for its depreciation.3.The reason isthat the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will now find itself under more pressureto manage the yuan as central banks in most rich economies do theircurrencies—by letting market forces determine their value. In bringing the yuaninto the SDR, the IMF had to determine that it is “freely usable”. Beforecoming to this decision, the IMF asked China to make changes to its currencyregime.4.Most importantly, China has now tied the yuan’s exchangerate at the start of daily trading to the previous day’s close; in the past thestarting quote was in effect set at the whim of the PBOC, often creating a biggap with the value at which it last traded. It was the elimination of this gapthat lay behind the yuan’s 2% devaluation in August, a move that rattled globalmarkets. Though the yuan is still far from being a free-floating currency—thecentral bank has intervene