This paper investigates to what extent the oil price shock and three other types of underlying
macroeconomic shocks impact the trend movements of China's real exchange rate. By constructing a fourdimensional
structural VAR model, the results suggest that real oil price shocks would lead to a minor
appreciation of the long-term real exchange rate due to China's lesser dependence on imported oil than its
trading partners included in the RMB basket peg regime and rigorous government energy regulations. The
real shocks, as opposed to nominal shocks, are found to be dominant in the variations of the real exchange
rate.