published in: Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2012, 26 (4), 125–146.
Over the last decade, the internal and external macroeconomic imbalances in China have risen to unprecedented levels. In 2008, China's national savings rate soared to over 53 percent of its GDP, whereas its current account surplus exceeded 9 percent of GDP. The current paper presents a unified framework for understanding the structural causes of these imbalances. I argue that the imbalances are attributable to a set of policies and institutions embedded in the economy. Moreover, the accession of China to the World Trade Organization has dramatically amplified the effects of these structural distortions. I document major trends in aggregate savings, investment, trade, and net foreign asset positions in China, and explore options for policy reforms aimed at rebalancing the Chinese economy.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.