Abstract: Chinese economy has become the high-quality development stage from the high growth period, which means the financial policy should de-emphasize the quality targets and measures to fully play the role of the price leverage in financial resources allocation. With the interest rate liberalization reform was preliminary accomplished, due to financial innovation and disintermediation as well as the more sophisticated financial market and products, it is urgent to transform China’s monetary policy from the quantity based mode to the price based mode, which is also the necessary step to achieve the high quality economic development.
We first elaborately review the theory of monetary policy and practices in the advanced economies. We find out that the quantity and price are the two sides of one coin and it is equivalent of the quantity based monetary policy and the price based monetary policy in theory. The quantity policy takes effects directly but is prone to contort the price mechanism and individual behaviors. The price policy takes effects with the adjustment of the individuals which needs a good financial market and interest policy transmission. The development of financial market and monetary policy channel play an important role for the monetary policy mode.
The retrospect of monetary policy in China shows that the necessary conditions for monetary policy transformation have been satisfied, but we also point out that the practice of monetary policy in modern sense lasts for only around twenty years, after abandoning the direct controls on credit behavior and turning to the quantity indirect policy with the money supply as the intermediate target in 1998. Central bank in China is always confronting the impetus of investment and credit expansion due the traditional growth-led economic mode. Because of the governmental preference to a higher growth rate, there are soft budget constraint sectors such as the local government vehicles, stated owned firms and housing industry enterprises. The supervisory affaires of the central bank in China were separated. While, due to the industry development dominance of the supervisory ideology, there are race to the bottom in the financial supervision, which promote the rapid growth of the shadow banking in recent years and financial risks are accumulated heavily. Although there is enough market breadth of the financial market, there are still too strict regulations and the market depth is relatively low. The monetary markets and bond markets are still separated, the admittance of the market, esp. the derivative markets are sill strictly controlled, the financial products are immature and there are still implicit dual interest track. The exchange rate is still lack of edacity.
So, with the problems above, monetary policy in China still needs quantity measures and we should do lots of preparations to fulfill the sufficient conditions for the monetary policy transformation. The crucial point is the development of the financial market system, including mature financial micro foundations, good guards of financial institutions and well functional financial product markets. Financial markets developments also promote the interest policy transmission and will ensure the success of the monetary policy transformation. With the deepening of the supply-side reform and reform in the difficult areas of hedge risks, esp. the improvements of the governmental debts and supervisory systems, we should vigorously promote price-based monetary policy transformation, with which to enhance economic and financial high quality development.
Full report ：WP No.20183 Transformation of Monetary Policy in the High-Quality Development Stage.pdf
