Growing pains of the Chinese Renminbi
Few have the insight into the Chinese economy of Dr Guonan Ma. Educated in China and the US, Dr Ma is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Australia-China Relations Institute at UTS and a non-resident scholar at Bruegel, an economic think tank based in Belgium. Dr Ma served as senior economist at the Representative Office for Asia and the Pacific of the Bank for International Settlements for 14 years. Prior to this he was Chief North Asia Economist for investment banks Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and Bankers Trust.
On June 14 Dr Ma gave a fascinating presentation in which he shared his knowledge on the Chinese economy, exchange rate and capital account opening following the IMF's inclusion of the RMB in the Special Drawing Rights' (SDR) currencies. He then offered his perspectives on China’s rising debt challenges, the focus of his research while based at ACRI for past three months. Dr Ma expounded on these issues in a discussion with ACRI Deputy Director James Laurenceson. A key point Dr Ma emphasised was that addressing these challenges would require a balanced mix of policy responses from China’s government aimed at restructuring and achieving efficiency gains on the supply side of the economy, while also offering appropriate support on the demand side to protect corporate earnings from an excessive slowdown.
Dr Ma and Professor Laurenceson are currently authoring a research paper on China’s rising debt challenges to be presented at the 28th annual conference of the Chinese Economics Society of Australia, which will be held at James Cook University next month.
Gallery
