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The Impact of Deregulating OBU's Renminbi's Business on The The Impact of Deregulating OBU’s Renminbi’s Business on the Financing Behavior of Taiwanese Businessmen in China Yi Chun Kuo, Associate professor of Chung Yuan Christian University, Taiwan ABSTRACT August 2011, Taiwan Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) announced that banks in Taiwan can serve the Renmibi’s (RMB) business on offshore banking unit (OBU). After that, Taiwanese businessmen can engage in RMB-related businesses through OBU in Taiwan to get access to RMB financing to enhance the flexibility in capital utilization. The foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade of Taiwanese businessmen in China are important parts of Taiwan’s economy, which create huge amount of cash flow between the Mainland China and Taiwan. Due to the financial crisis in 2008, the fluctuation of exchange rate caused serious problems to import and export enterprises. RMB is relatively stable than other currencies and being preferred by Taiwanese businesses for their financial risk controlling. This study survey the policy impact of the deregulation and aims to find out whether the OBU business opening would affect Taiwanese businessmen in terms of their financing behaviors, and whether the opening of OBU business is beneficial to most Taiwanese businessmen or only on some Taiwanese businessmen. Keywords: Financial behavior, Offshore banking unit (OBU), Renminibi (RMB), Taiwanese businessmen in China, Cross-border trade settlement, Cross-border RMB Business INTRODUCTION China has been implementing the reform and opening up policies since 1978. With the economic development and rise of China, China has become the world’s second largest economy by 2010. According to the Chinese customs statistics, China’s exports in January 1992 amounted to 3,991 million USD and increased to 113,653.43 million USD in 2009. In the respect of import, China’s total imports amounted to 3,016 million USD in January 1992 and increased to 94,560 million USD in 2009 (General Administration of Customs, 2009). China’s total exports increased by more than 28 times and the total imports increased by more than 31 times in 17 years. With China’s growing volume of foreign trade, the benefits derived from RMB cross-border trade become increasingly important to China. RMB cross-border trade has also become a hot topic. In December 2003, the people’s bank of China (PBC) and Southeast Asia countries (Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam) signed bilateral Currency Swap Agreement. On July 1, 2009, an announcement of promulgating the Administrative Rules on the Pilot Program for RMB Settlement of Cross-border Trade Transactions was released. On April 8, 2009, the State Council decided to conduct pilot RMB settlement of cross-border trade transactions in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuha, Dongguan, Hong Kong, Macau and the ASEAN member countries. In 2010, China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed Free Trade Area (FTA). After that, China signed bilateral Currency Swap Agreement with many countries, i.e. the Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Belarus, Indonesia, and Argentina. China tried to increase the scale and usage of RMB and steadily promote the pilot RMB settlement of cross-border trade transactions to enhance facilitation of trade and investment. The Journal of Global Business Management Volume 9 * Number 1 * February 2013 71 In 2008, improper operation of subprime mortgages and derivatives caused global financial turmoil. The credit of the U. S. and Europe has been hit hard in the financial crisis, causing currency instability consequently. On the other hand, although China’s economy has been affected by international economic impact, China has not suffered as serious as the U. S. and European countries. In the past, international trade was mostly settled in international currencies i.e. USD, Euro, Japanese Yen and Deutsche Mark. Due to relatively stricter official control, RMB has been more stable than other international currencies in this financial turmoil. Hence, other countries, in particular, the China’s neighboring countries are increasingly willing to use RMB for settlement. Coupled with China’s official intent on RMB internationalization and China’s active expansion of RMB-related businesses, the internationalization of RMB gradually becomes a hot topic for discussion. The trade relations between Taiwan and China have become increasingly closer in past 30 years (Liou, 2010). In July 2011, Taiwan’s imports from China accounted for 28% of the total and Taiwan’s exports to China accounted for 16% of the total (MOF, 2011). As the data indicate, import and export percentages have increased significantly over time. China has become the largest destination of foreign investment of Taiwanese businessmen. With more frequent cross-Strait business activities, the needs of RMB businesses of Taiwanese businessmen in Mainland China have gradually become an issue of concern (Lin and Yi, 2006; Fuller, 2008). In the past, Taiwan and Mainland China were opposite due to political background. The governments across the Strait had restrictions on cross-Strait financing. If a Taiwanese businessman wants to do business in Mainland China, the businessman may set up in a third location foreign company and establish OBU account in the name of the foreign company in Taiwan, by which funds can be transferred and used. In the past, according to Taiwan’s law, the OBU established in Taiwan cannot provide deposit, exchange, credit of RMB, having many restrictions on RMB-related businesses. Although Taiwanese businessmen had financial channels in China, the implementation would be very difficult. As a result, Taiwanese businessmen had quite limited financing channels in Mainland China (Huang et al., 2009). After amending the law and ongoing consultations of the two governments, on August 30, 2011, Taiwan Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) approved Taiwan’s banking industry to run RMB business. The opening of RMB business can reduce the procedure and cost of currency exchange for trading to make the use of funds more flexible. Taiwanese businessmen can engage in RMB-related businesses through offshore banking business (OBU) in Taiwan to get access to RMB financing to enhance the flexibility in capital utilization. Based on the above background, this study aims to find out whether the OBU business opening would affect Taiwanese businessmen in terms of their financing behaviors. Whether the opening of OBU business is beneficial to most Taiwanese businessmen or has impact on some Taiwanese businessmen only. THE DEVELOPMENT OF RENMINBI For historical and political background, Renminbi (RMB) had been controlled stricter than Western currencies. In 1987, Chinese government changed political strategy and started economic reform. After that, China released the deregulation of RMB step by step. In 2008, due to financial crisis, the currencies of U.S. dollar and Euro became unstable. During the period of financial crisis, the recession of Chinese economics is not as serious as Western countries. RMB value is more stable than other international currencies at that time. China started releasing the restriction of RMB premeditated to increase the liquidity and acceptance of RMB in order to urge RMB as a settlement, investment and reserve currency before realizing the goal of making RMB becoming the International currency. 72 The Journal of Global Business Management Volume 9 * Number 1* February 2013 To increase the using scale of RMB in international trading, Chinese government is speeding up the pace to promote the usage of RMB by signing RMB settlement of cross-border trade transactions or agreements with other countries. After entering the world trade organization (WTO) in 2001, China deregulated the restriction of RMB step by step. In November, 2002, China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed Framework on Economic Cooperation. To reached the goal of the” Internationalization” of RMB, the PBC declared in its Announcement No.26 that foreign financial institutions would be allowed to do RMB business in Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Qingdao, Nanjing and Wuhan since December 1, 2002. On January 14, 2007, the PBC (No. 3) released an announcement to allow domestic financial institutions to issue RMB financial bonds in Hong Kong, and further expanded the RMB business in Hong Kong. In 2008, because of the financial crisis, the issue of RMB’s internationalization aroused discussion (Zhang, 2009; Wu et al., 2010; Chen and Cheung, 2011). On December 12, 2008, the PBC and the Bank of Korea agreed to establish a Swap Arrangement to help improve short-term liquidity conditions in the financial systems of China and Korea and to promote the bilateral trade. This new facility supported the provision of liquidity in amounts of up to 180 billion RMB/ 38 trillion KRW. The effective period of the facility will be three years and could be extended by agreement between the two sides. In 2009, the PBC signed bilateral domestic currency swap agreements with six economies (the Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Belarus, Indonesia, and Argentina) to support bilateral trade and investment with a total value of 650 billion Yuan. Not only developed bilateral currency swap agreement with other regions, China also cooperates with European area in the aspect of trades, investments and economics aggressively. On January 1, 2010, China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed Free Trade Area (FTA). The establishment of China-ASEAN FTA helped the development of RMB Trade Settlement. To promote cross-border trade and investment, the PBC signed 153.5 billion Yuan worth of domestic currency swap agreements with monetary authorities in Iceland and Singapore in 2010. As the end of 2010, the overall scale of currency swap agreements reached 803.5 billion Yuan. These agreements and operations have played a role in promoting the use of RMB in cross-border trade settlement and investment. Cross-border trade transactions settled in RMB in regions where the pilot program was launched grew notably in 2010 (Sung, 2011). Overseas RMB settlement was concentrated in Hong Kong and Singapore, which together accounted for 88 percent of the total RMB payment and receipt business.
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