Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has described the inclusion of the renminbi within the IMF’s internal accounting mechanism as a metter of when’, not if’.
But other than assuaging national pride, making the renminbi part of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights SDR a unit of accounting used solely to measure IMF transactions with central banks will have no practical impact without greater Chinese reforms.
“There would be no practical benefit for China beyond pride,” said Akinari Horii, former assistant governor of the Bank of Japan and currently a member of the board of the Canon Institute for Global Studies. Horii said...