Op-Ed Contributors

Toward a fair ratings system

By Deng Yuwen (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-19 07:56

Dagong's report is expected to help break the long-established monopoly of Moody's, S&P and Fitch over the global credit ratings market. For a long time, the credit ratings offered by the three have caused controversies across the world due to their lack of an independent, impartial, objective and scientific perspective.

Also, US values and standards have been mainly used to evaluate other countries' sovereign debt as well as those of their enterprises. This has not only resulted in their repeated failure to issue a necessary alert in a timely and accurate manner but has also contributed much to global financial turbulences.

There exists two super-hegemonies in the current world, with one being the US and the other Moody's, a US politician once put it. Compared with the US' conquest of the world by means of force, Moody's has controlled the world through its dominance in credit ratings.

Credit ratings agencies are a new hegemony in the post-Cold War period, a New York Times editorial once pointed out. That could explain why the European Union felt anger at Moody's, S&P and Fitch and announced that it would set up its own ratings agency after the three US-led agencies rated the Greek sovereign credit as junk, a rating that caused Greece's crisis to spread to the rest of the european continent.

China has also been a victim of the three ratings agencies. At a time when China launched accelerated efforts to list some domestic banks in overseas markets in 2003, S&P turned a blind eye to the country's fast and sustainable economic growth and announced that it would maintain its BBB-grade rating of the country's sovereign debt, the minimal level "suitable for investment".

It also gave 13 Chinese commercial banks a junk rating. S&P, together with Moody's and Fitch, even gave China's sovereign debt a lower credit rating than debt-plagued Spain.

To reform the West-dominated international financial order, more credit ratings agencies should be set up in non-Western countries to break Western monopoly over the global credit ratings business.

Dagong's recent report signals China's efforts to participate in making new rules for international ratings and to seek a larger say in this area. However, China still has a long way to go before it can increase its own influence in its credit ratings system given that the country still faces huge difficulties in expanding the authority of its fledgling credit ratings agency and letting its ratings report be accepted by the international community.

As its economic strength grows further, China's credit ratings agency is expected to win a proportionate international status. What the country should do now is to map out the development layout for its credit ratings system as soon as possible and make related laws and regulations in a bid to offer institutional support for the country's pursuit of a deserved voice in the international financial market and the power to make international financial rules.

The author is a senior editor with the Study Times.

(China Daily 07/19/2010 page8)