위안화 평가절상과 한국경제 - 평가와 전망 -

Abstract

There are two factors pressing the yuan revaluation. One is the global imbalance resulting from enormous US trade deficit from China and US economic stagnation. The other is China’s upward price pressure and overheated economy via surplus liquidity in money market which has been caused by the inflows of continuously increasing money supply, trade surplus, foreign direct investment and international speculative hot-money. Therefore the yuan revaluation is rising as the important policy instrument to take external pressure from USA and EU and to prevent overheated economy in China. In China, the de facto fixed exchange rate system had been practiced until 2005 and thereafter currency basket weights system was practiced until 2008 and yuan was revaluated 18.5% during 3 years. But facing global financial crisis, China returned the fixed exchange rate system and recently come back to currency basket weights system. It is generally accepted that China’s yuan value has been underestimated to 20-30% in the international trade market. To get rid of this discrepancy, it is supposed to raise the yuan value with abrupt and rapid method, but many people think that the gradual method with 3-5% yuan value increase within 2010 is preferred. The impact of yuan revaluation on the Korean economy are as follows：first, it is expected that the export of durable consumer’s goods to China will be expanded but considering the competitive power of China’s product, trade gains are subject to restriction in the area of flat display and wireless communication equipment. Also if Korean export to China is influenced by far by China’s economic trend rather than yuan exchange rate, yuan revaluation will not be helpful to Korean economy. Second, textiles, transportation equipment, primary metal industry which should import the greater part of raw materials from China are expected to lose their previous gains. Third, if China’s competitive power is weakened by yuan revaluation in global market, Korea’s gains will be limited to small magnitudes. 1% revaluation of yuan turn out to give rise to roughly 0.6 billion dollars trade gains to Korean economy and favorable sectors are restricted to automobiles, electronics, and machinery. In sum, if yuan revaluation is carried out gradually with narrow range in the long peirod, the impact of yuan revaluation on the Korean economy will be appeared very small.