IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2019-244.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Drivers, Implications and Outlook for China’s Shrinking Current Account Surplus

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Pragyan Deb
  • Albe Gjonbalaj
  • Mrs. Swarnali A Hannan

Abstract

China’s current account surplus has declined significantly from its peak in 2008 and the external position in 2018 was in line with medium-term fundamentals and desirable policies. While cyclical factors and expansionary credit and fiscal policies contributed, the trend decline has been largely structural, driven by economic rebalancing from investment to consumption, appreciation of the real effective exchange rate (REER) towards equilibrium, increase in outbound tourism, and moderation in goods surplus reflecting market saturation and China’s faster growth compared with trading partners. Policies should focus on continued rebalancing and opening up to ensure excessive surpluses do not return, and to prepare the economy and the financial system to handle more volatile capital flows. From a global perspective, the decline in China’s surplus has lowered global imbalances, but with different impact across countries. The analysis is based on data as of July 2019.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Pragyan Deb & Albe Gjonbalaj & Mrs. Swarnali A Hannan, 2019. "The Drivers, Implications and Outlook for China’s Shrinking Current Account Surplus," IMF Working Papers 2019/244, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2019/244
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=48712
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ms. Longmei Zhang & Mr. R. Brooks & Ding Ding & Haiyan Ding & Hui He & Jing Lu & Rui Mano, 2018. "China’s High Savings: Drivers, Prospects, and Policies," IMF Working Papers 2018/277, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Carlos Caceres & Mr. Diego A. Cerdeiro & Rui Mano, 2019. "Trade Wars and Trade Deals: Estimated Effects using a Multi-Sector Model," IMF Working Papers 2019/143, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Anna Wong, 2017. "China’s Current Account : External Rebalancing or Capital Flight?," International Finance Discussion Papers 1208, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bekkers, Eddy & Schroeter, Sofia, 2020. "An economic analysis of the US-China trade conflict," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2020-04, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    2. Niu, Geng & Zhou, Yang & Gan, Hongwu, 2020. "Financial literacy and retirement preparation in China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    3. Wang, Lirong & Zhou, Jinnan & Hueng, C. James, 2022. "Dynamics of gross capital flows and financial stress in China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    4. Cecilia Bellora & Lionel Fontagné, 2019. "Shooting Oneself in the Foot? Trade War and Global Value Chains," Working Papers 2019-18, CEPII research center.
    5. Sanyal, Anirban, 2023. "Caught in the Crossfire: How Trade Policy Uncertainty Impacts Global Trade," EconStor Preprints 272825, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    6. repec:zbw:bofitp:2019_017 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Wenwen Zhang & Yi-Bin Chiu, 2020. "Globalization, Country Risks, and Trade in Tourism Services: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-26, July.
    8. Pol Antràs & Davin Chor, 2021. "Global Value Chains," NBER Working Papers 28549, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Rudi Purwono & Unggul Heriqbaldi & Miguel Angel Esquivias & M. Khoerul Mubin, 2022. "The American–China Trade War and Spillover Effects on Value-Added Exports from Indonesia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-22, March.
    10. Mr. Eugenio M Cerutti & Shan Chen & Mr. Pragyan Deb & Albe Gjonbalaj & Mrs. Swarnali A Hannan & Mr. Adil Mohommad, 2019. "Managed Trade: What Could be Possible Spillover Effects of a Potential Trade Agreement Between the U.S. and China?," IMF Working Papers 2019/251, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Klaus Weyerstrass, 2019. "Trade Deficit with China – an Issue for the Euro Area?," EconPol Policy Brief 20, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    12. Cecilia Bellora & Lionel Fontagné, 2019. "Shooting Oneself in the Foot? Trade War and Global Value Chains," Working Papers 2019-18, CEPII research center.
    13. Simola, Heli, 2019. "Evaluating international impacts of China-specific shocks in an input-output framework," BOFIT Discussion Papers 17/2019, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    14. Li, Chunding & Whalley, John, 2021. "Trade protectionism and US manufacturing employment," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 353-361.
    15. Kireyev, Alexei & Leonidov, Andrei, 2021. "Twin trade shocks: Spillovers from US-China trade tensions," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 174-188.
    16. Hallren, Ross, 2020. "Evaluating a Simple Method for Estimating Sub-National Trade Flows," Conference papers 333171, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    17. Simola, Heli, 2019. "Evaluating international impacts of China-specific shocks in an input-output framework," BOFIT Discussion Papers 17/2019, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    18. Laurence Wicht, 2019. "The impact of trade tensions on Switzerland: A quantitative assessment," Aussenwirtschaft, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science, Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economics Research, vol. 70(01), pages 1-34, December.
    19. Rui Mano & Jiayi Zhang, 2018. "China’s Rebalancing: Recent Progress, Prospects and Policies," IMF Working Papers 2018/243, International Monetary Fund.
    20. Han, Xuehui & Cheng, Yuan, 2020. "Consumption- and productivity-adjusted dependency ratio with household structure heterogeneity in China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2019/244. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.