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The past 40 years have been extraordinary for China.
Its booming economy is now the second largest in the world.
And its currency, the renminbi,
is becoming more and more important.
When I was growing up here, in the 1980s and the 1990s,
this was a closed country.
Everything was regulated, particularly money.
Today, I've come to Beijing University
to meet Professor Fu Jun
who teaches politics and economics here.
He's going to tell me
what tight control of the renminbi meant for ordinary people.
China at the time was isolated.
For the average person
in their daily lives...
Since there was a shortage of goods and services,
they always had to queue up
in long lines,
to get the goods which were necessary to carry on their daily lives.
So the economy - because of the shortage of goods -
was strictly rationed.
Chinese people were not aware that we were lagging behind
and we needed to do something different, to change the system,
so that China had a better chance of catching up.
Frank Fang works for HSBC in Beijing.
He lived through this period of time
when strict control of the renminbi
made life difficult for Chinese people.
We're now in the middle of Beijing
in an area of old traditional Chinese hutong.
This looks very similar
to the hutong environment where I grew up.
Literally, this is where people live in a courtyard
with a dozen families.
Normally, they did not have their own bathroom facilities in the old days
and they had to share everything.
As you can see, there are still people living here
but you can also tell that many of them are moving out of this area
and the whole area is being redeveloped.
I bet next year, if you came here again,
you wouldn't see the same things again.
I worked for a US TV news agency.
My first salary payment was in FEC,
something you probably haven't heard of before.
It's called a Foreign Exchange Certificate.
I happen to have a set of it with me. You can take a look.
Thank you!
These are RMB but they are not the usual RMBs.
They were circulated in China between the 1970s and 1990s.
Why would a foreign company not be able to pay in RMB?
As a foreign company set up in China,
they were restricted to that special Foreign Exchange Certificate currency
and therefore when the company needed to pay their employees,
they could only withdraw FECs from their accounts.
How restricted was the RMB as a currency in the 1990s?
Very restricted.
It could only be circulated within China.
You could not take currency outside of China.
You could not bring overseas currency into China, either.
If you needed to convert your local currency, RMB, into, say, US dollars,
you needed to produce documents
to prove your genuine need for it.
As Frank says,
life in old China could be difficult and frustrating.
But the country has changed further and faster
than most people expected.
Ultimately, the growth story is this -
given resources,
growth is the function of people, multiplied by technology.
So if you multiply 1.3 billion people
with that very powerful technology,
you will see very dramatic growth rates.
But we need to make the necessary reforms
so that we turn potential into reality.
The new generation of ambitious Chinese people have freedoms
that their parents could only dream of.
To see that in action,
I've come to the heart of industrial China,
to the southern city of Guangzhou.
Rebecca Cai works for HSBC here.
She's ambitious and successful.
I am Vice President
of Operations,
taking care of the contact centre and operations.
So in my team now
there are over 700 staff.
Also, there are three sites in Guangzhou.
I can also visit
other global super centres in other countries.
Is your job or career important to you?
Of course, because it's my job.
It's because of my job that I have my large income
which enables me to have many experiences
and gives me the chance to travel and buy lots of good things.
So do you use RMB when you're shopping in Europe, as well?
Yes, I use my Union Pay credit card.
I was surprised because a lot of famous shops,
they also accept the Union Pay, so I have an advantage
because I don't need to pay the exchange rate twice.
Why do you think the Chinese consumers love big, famous brands?
Chinese people now are becoming richer than before
so they also enjoy the lifestyle, enjoy the good quality products.
So it's also a sign that Chinese society
is becoming a consumer society.
- A consumer-based society? - Yes.
The opening up of the currency has changed the people's lives here
and the most exciting thing is that it is only the beginning.
The day of RMB globalisation
is coming rather soon.
It's already very international in many markets nowadays
and given people's increasing interest in this currency
and China's growing economic strength,
that momentum is not going to slow down.
The process of transforming the renminbi
into an open, easily exchangeable currency
has changed the future for Chinese people
and it has opened the door for growth and prosperity.