China has undoubtedly benefited from the world system created and supported by the US. Richard Nixon’s journey to China in 1972 opened the door for China’s return to the international community.
Most of the next two decades were a honeymoon for Sino-US relations. On the economic front, the US not only granted China most-favoured-nation trade status, but also tolerated China’s mercantilist approach to international trade and finance, notably its dual-track exchange-rate regime. In the 1990s, bilateral economic ties continued to expand. US support for China’s integration into the world system culminated with the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Of course, China’s inadequate intellectual property protection has damaged relations. And the role of China’s state-owned enterprises and official Chinese support for technological “national champions” have also hurt relations.
Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP
But neither of these flaws, nor the exchange rate, is at the root of today’s global imbalances. Consider the exchange rate. The UK maintained a current account surplus for the century before World War I, and the US did the same for about 80 years before 1980. But neither country, apparently, did so by manipulating its exchange rate.
Moreover, economies that managed to narrow their external gaps with the US substantially after World War II ran current account surpluses throughout their rapid-growth periods. This contradicts US economists’ conventional wisdom that fast-growing countries should borrow today against their larger future shares in the world economy.
One possible explanation is that the relationship between gross domestic product growth rates and a country’s current account position is not linear. Compared to countries with very slow growth rates, countries with reasonably high growth rates should borrow. But when a country’s growth rate continues to increase, its saving rate will increase faster than its investment rate, so it is more likely to run a current account surplus.
For “catch-up” countries such as China, rapid growth is often accompanied by brisk structural change that moves factors of production from low-productivity activities to sectors with much higher productivity. China’s exchange rate policy is problematic not because it promotes exports, but because it has forced the country to accumulate a huge pile of wasteful foreign reserves. The Chinese government’s reluctance to allow faster exchange rate appreciation may reflect its aversion to large, unforeseeable fluctuations, given its determination to make the renminbi an international reserve currency.
While China’s economy is hampered by structural difficulties, the US is not free of similar challenges. Frankly, I am always struck by US economists’ reluctance to discuss the structural problems that caused the current crisis, and that hinder the US’s recovery. Most seem to believe that the crisis result from bad monetary policy and lax financial sector regulation; some even blame the savings accumulated by Asian countries.
That may be true of the immediate causes of the crisis. But its eruption was far more deeply rooted in the US version of capitalism, which aims at high levels of competition, innovation, returns, and compensation. While this model has, of course, helped the US to become the world’s leading economy, it has also delivered severe structural problems.
For example, to sustain high innovation, the US has maintained the most flexible labour market among mature economies. But this is not without costs. Companies often lay off a whole department of scientists to shift to a new product, destroying not only human capital, but also human lives.
Meanwhile, the US financial sector, caused the crisis and is underpinning the US current account deficit. Oil exporters aside, countries running current account surpluses have stronger manufacturing sectors relative to their financial sectors, while the relationship is reversed for countries running external deficits, such as the US and the UK.
Finally, the US’s global hegemony has proven to be a curse as well as a blessing. The US dollar accounts for 60% of world trade, and the US has the strongest military in the world, making it a safe haven for global investors. But, while large capital inflows reduce borrowing costs, they also tend to cause current account deficits: lower costs of capital boost asset prices, with the wealth effect then prompting people to consume more than they earn.
The policies adopted or discussed by the US policymakers and scholars nowadays seek to cure only the symptoms of a deeper malaise. As a first step to recovery, the US must undertake financial sector reforms. As Lenin pointed out, financial capitalism is the highest form of capitalism —that is, it is the end of capitalism.
Lenin may have gotten the underlying analysis wrong, but today we know that his conclusion may have been right for another reason: financial capitalism forces a country into unsustainable indebtedness. Unfortunately, the US’s financial reforms have been half-baked at best.
For three decades, “reform” was a word reserved for the Chinese side of the Sino-US relationship. The US, one hopes, will grow to like the sound of it.
Yao Yang is director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University.
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