China's Exchange Rate Policy: Options and Prescriptions

Over the past five years China has emerged as the world's largest global surplus economy; indeed by 2007–08 the size of its surplus relative to its GDP was of a magnitude unprecedented for a large trading economy. This development is especially surprising since in the first twenty-five years of economic reform China's trade and current account surpluses were quite small by East Asian standards, averaging less than 2 percent of GDP.

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the key…