China's Approach to Rebalancing: A Conceptual and Policy Framework

This article seeks to develop a conceptual and policy framework for understanding China's role in the global economic imbalances. China's contribution to these imbalances via recurrent trade and financial surpluses corresponds with a phase of deepening structural risks to China's economic growth and development. These structural challenges include: the composition of growth resulting from China's dynamic internal transformation, China's trade orientation, the trajectory of resource use and CO ₂ emissions, welfare problems relating to distribution and international constraints. This article develops a conceptual framework for examining the relationship between the processes of long-run structural transformation in China, its economic imbalances, and the role of institutional reform in dealing with these structural challenges. As such, economic policy should extend beyond short-term macro management to pursue an institutional reform agenda to facilitate broader structural change to mitigate constraints to future growth and to improve economic welfare.