PBOC explains RMB policy Experts discuss flexibility

Oct 8

CCTV reports the PBOC's October 8 statement rejecting competitive devaluation and preset exchange-rate targets and emphasizing market supply/demand, a currency basket, flexibility and basic stability. Wen Bin discusses orderly two-way movements and the policy framework; Dong Ximiao explains the end of routine intervention in 2017 and exchange-rate flexibility across cycles, with historical examples. Their analysis supports a managed-float explanation rather than a newly fixed rate or a promise of a particular market level.

The People's Bank of China publishes its first comprehensive systematic renminbi exchange-rate policy-position document on October 8. As reported by CCTV, it defends a market-based managed float and short-term stability safeguards, denies using competitive depreciation for trade advantage and disputes exchange-rate-only explanations of global imbalances. It argues for shared structural adjustment and states prospective demand, opening and growth-transformation priorities. CCTV's October 9 explanation adds Wen Bin and Dong Ximiao's qualified accounts of two-way flexibility, market/basket mechanisms and the end of routine intervention in 2017. They explain the policy framework across economic cycles; their historical examples do not constitute a new fixed-rate target or completed market outcome.