China's Macroeconomic Imbalances: Causes and Consequences

摘要

The Chinese government has so far failed to reduce the rocketing external surplus, to reduce the foreign exchange reserves from a level which is now difficult to justify, to ease the increasingly tense relationship with its trade partners or to rebalance the pattern of economic growth. This failure might indicate a lack of concern for these objectives. It might instead represent a deliberate weighing up of the benefits and costs of the current policies against alternatives. However, it might simply reflect the sheer speed with which the economy moved into external imbalance in the period 2004-07 - which would inevitably involve lags in policymaking - and the subsequent policy priority that was given to the effects of the world recession in 2008-10.