Internationalization of the Renminbi

Since the late-2000s, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has sought to internationalize its official currency, the Renminbi (RMB). In 2004, Hong Kong resident could purchased yuan without required underlying up to 20,000 per day. The RMB Internationalization accelerated in 2009 when China established dim sum bond market and expanded Cross-Border Trade RMB Settlement Pilot Project, which helps establish pools of offshore RMB liquidity. In 2013, the RMB was the 8th most traded currency in the world and the 7th most traded in early 2014. By the end of 2014, RMB has ranked 5th as the most traded currency, according to SWIFT's report, at 2.2% of SWIFT payment behind JPY (2.7%), GBP (7.9%), EUR (28.3%) and USD (44.6%). In February next year, RMB became the second most used currency for trade and services, and reach the ninth position in forex trading. The RMB Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) quotas were also extended to other five countries - the UK (extended 15 October 2013), Singapore (22 October 2013), France (20 June 2014), Korea (18 July 2014), Germany (18 July 2014), and Canada (8 November 2014), each with the quotas of ¥80bn except Canada and Singapore (¥50bn). Previously, only Hong Kong was allowed, with a ¥270bn quota. The launch of Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect (SSE and HKEx) in November 2014, embarked China into the next stage of internationalization. In January 2015 Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang, announced a planned second Stock Connect linking Shenzhen and Hong Kong exchanges. The China's RMB internationalization and foreign exchange (FX) reforms are evolving rapidly and full convertibility is expected over the next couple of years.

Until the early years of the 21st century, the Renminbi was not fully convertible and its flow in and out of China faced heavy restrictions. The PBoC, under instructions from the Chinese government, began the move to full convertibility beginning around 2008. This has taken the form of permitting the use of RMB outside China for all current account transactions such as commercial trade, payment of services, interest payment, dividend payment, etc. and the use of RMB for certain approved capital account transactions such as foreign direct investment (FDI), outward direct investment (ODI), Central banks and offshore Participating banks can invest excess RMB in mainland interbank bond market through China Interbank Bond Market (CIBM quota), investment into mainland China (through RQFII quota), offshore investment from mainland (through QDII quota), including the onshore individual investment to offshore through Qualified Domestic Individual Investors program (so-called QDII2).

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