Ratings game up for grabs
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Due to lack of competition, the US ratings agencies have long remained reluctant to increase their technological research capability and funding input to raise their credit and risk evaluation abilities.
It is expected that the recent report by China's Dagong will help the world break the US-led monopoly over the global credit ratings business. Ratings agencies in other countries too will be motivated to improve their own ratings methods by raising service quality and judgment standards. They will also make unremitting efforts to improve their risk evaluation ability through financial innovations.
In this sense, Dagong has not only safeguarded China's own economic interests, but has also contributed much to global efforts aimed at improving credit rating efficiency and quality, which will help in a healthy and steady development of the global economy.
Undeniably, China still faces a variety of challenges if it aims to succeed in acquiring a deserved say in the global financial market.
The first challenge facing the country is how to set up and popularize its own credit ratings brand. The creation of an accurate credit ratings report at an appropriate time will help China's ratings agencies gradually get the deserved attention of other countries and then win recognition.
At the same time, international capital will remain sensitive to reports emanating from China on the world's sovereign credit status, other than the biased index presented by US ratings agencies.
As China opens its financial market wider to the outside world, more foreign investors will flock to its credit market, thereby helping the country popularize its own credit ratings system.
Growing eagerness from across the world for its credit ratings report, together with its economic build-up and the consolidation of its financial institutions, will unavoidably lift China's say in this critical realm.
To facilitate this process, the country should try to increase the number of its trained financial talent and make its credit ratings system more scientific, objective and accurate, in order to acquire a deserved seat for its ratings agencies in the global financial market.
At a time when China is paying growing attention to financial innovation and striving to elevate the status of the yuan in the global monetary arena, the country should also fully acknowledge the importance of setting financial standards different from the Western world.
Only with the ability for standards setting can China be able to transform its financial expertise into real wealth and gain an advantageous position in the global monetary mechanism.
Despite the significant step made by Dagong toward this end, China still has a long way to go before getting a deserved say in the global financial market commensurate with its international economic status.
The author is deputy dean of the School of Economics and professor of finance, Fudan University.
