In a Shift, Chinese Exporters Cling to Dollars

Many Chinese exporters are starting to hoard the dollars they earn, betting that the yuan is unlikely to appreciate much more, a shift in strategy that is having a ripple effect throughout the country's financial system, The Wall Street Journal reported. Until recently, Chinese exporters like state-owned Huihong International Group and privately held Saijia Co. had rushed to sell their dollar earnings to banks as soon as they got paid, in exchange for the appreciating yuan. Now, because the Chinese currency no longer seems certain to rise, those companies are holding their dollars for as long as they can. "In the past, we would exchange our dollar earnings for renminbi on the same day we received the payment," said Fang Minghua, head of Saijia, a company in eastern China's Jiangsu province that sells clothing to the U.S., Australia, Japan and Europe. "Now, we're not in the rush to sell" dollars, Mr. Fang said. "We would like to wait and see." That change has broad implications not just for Chinese companies, but also for China's banks, which are finding themselves with less foreign currency on reserve. For four months in the past eight months, the banks sold more foreign currency than they bought, a sign of the shift in corporate China toward holding dollars. Because companies aren't converting their dollars to yuan, fewer yuan are flowing into the economy. That has prompted the People's Bank of China to slash the banks' reserve-requirement ratio, known as RRR, three times since November to help banks lend more. Read more. (Subscription required.)