People's Construction Bank of China

On the eve of the grand celebrations marking the 45th anniversary for the founding of new China, the People’s Construction Bank of China, one of our country’s four pillars of the banking industry, welcomed its 40th birthday. The Government Administration Council decided on September 9, 1954, to establish the People’s Construction Bank of China to handle mainly appropriations for capital construction and floating capital loans for construction enterprises toexercise financial supervision of the rational use

What Prompts the People's Bank of China to Change Its Monetary Policy Stance?Evidence from a Discrete Choice Model

In the present paper, we model the policy stance of the People＇s Bank of China （PBC） as a latent variable, and the discrete changes in the reserve requirement ratio, policy interest rates, and the scale of open market operations are taken as signals of movement of this latent variable. We run a discrete choice regression that relates these observed indicators of policy stance to major trends of macroeconomic and financial developments, which are represented by common factors extracted from a large number of variables. The predicted value of the estimated model can then be interpreted as the implicit policy stance of the PBC. In a second step, we estimate how much of the variation in the PBC＇ s implicit stance can be explained by measures of its policy objectives on inflation, growth and financial stability. We find that deviations of CPI inflation from an implicit target and deviations of broad money growth from the announced targets, but not output gaps, figure significantly in the PBC＇s policy changes.

People's Bank of China Unveils Interest Rate Policy Reform

China’s central bank has unveiled its market-oriented proposals on interest rate policies. The People’s Bank of China said that China’s interest rate market reform would give priority to foreign currencies, rather than the Chinese currency. That means the day when the fluctuation of interest rates of foreign currencies will be liberalized would come before the floating of the Renmenbi rate.

Soaring Grain Prices Raise Global Concerns

Grain prices often dominate all other product prices,and an increase in their price is usually considered as a prelude to inflation.The three fairly serious inflations,in 1985,1988-1989,and 1993-1995 respectively,were all preceded by grain price hikes.Furthermore,the money supply surged in the preceding year or during the same year in which these inflations occurred.This year has witnessed the same symptoms. High grain prices,which still have a possibility to go up further,have attracted wide attention across the world,including in China.As early as the end of last year,the State Council issued a circular that mandated the stabilization of grain prices in order to strictly crack down on illegal actions such as dishonest merchants driving up grain prices.One time,five State-level Departments led by National Development and Reform Commission,released an urgent announcement in order to safeguard the stability of grain prices in the domestic market.Wu Xiaoling,Vice Governor of the People's Bank of China,said that the negative influences exerted on other product prices by the rise in global grain price should not be ignored.According to Wu,the People's Bank of China will continue to closely watch the price changes. From a global and comprehensive viewpoint,the article analyzes the features of the recent grain price hike and the reasons for its dramatic rise,as well as,the impact it will have on the global economy.

Constructing the Monetary Conditions Index for China

How can we fit different monetary transmission channels together to understand the effect of China＇s monetary policy？ This paper focuses on China＇s monetary conditions and aggregate demand in terms of the monetary conditions index （MCI）, which has been widely used as an important indicator for central banks, financial institutions, and scholars. To construct an MCI in the context of China over 1987Q1-2010Q2, we consider three channels through which monetary conditions might influence aggregate demand： the primary lending rate, the real effective exchange rate, and the bank credit. The weights of the component variables are obtained by estimating both the IS equation and the vector autoregressive model （VAR）, which yield somewhat similar results. Further empirical tests show that the MCIs we derived contain useful information about future output growth and inflation in China over the short and medium term. From a historical perspective, the MCI we derived is more informative than individual monetary variables for the understanding of the development of China＇s monetary conditions between 1987 and 2010.