China’s capital outflows topped global macro risks 12 months ago, but much less so recently. Is the risk gone, or is this just the calm before storm? Recently the PBoC has released the detailed Balance of Payment data for 2016. Using the same framework in a note we published one year ago (Dissecting China’s capital outflows in 2015, April 2016), this report focuses on the drivers behind China’s capital outflows in 2016. The main conclusions are:
Carry trade (“foreigners withdrawing money from China” or “Chinese paying down foreign debt”) has completely reversed, turning from outflows to inflows. In other words, outflows in 2016 were mostly driven by domestic residents and the most important driver was “Chinese increasing foreign assets”.
2016 was a year of a vicious cycle of outflows and depreciation. The weakening RMB led to domestic money outflows, which further weakened the RMB. The US$640bn capital outflows in 2016 were similar to those in 2015.
In response, the government substantially tightened capital controls from 2H16, which has largely worked. Meanwhile, foreign money has been returning from 4Q16 via FDI and bond investments. As such, we expect the headline FX reserves to fall by US$150bn in 2017 and for these to start rising again in 2018.
In our 2017 outlook, we made the out-of-consensus call that the USDCNY would end this year at 6.9, i.e. no depreciation from end-2016. With the updated knowledge on capital outflows, we are comfortable with the forecast.
![](https://bbs-cdn.datacourse.cn/static/image/filetype/pdf.gif)