Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary order in 1971, the US dollar has successfully maintained its global hegemony despite the US's declining share in the global economy, thanks largely to the US's political‐military supremacy. The recent rise of China poses a serious dilemma to the US. On the one hand, China's export‐oriented development has provided the US with low‐cost manufactured imports and cheap credit. On the other hand, the US's expanding current account deficit, largely attributable to China, has precipitated a crisis of confidence over the dollar's long‐term viability. This dilemma explains the US's vacillation in its currency conflict with China over the last decade. China has also been caught in a dilemma. While keeping its currency cheap could help sustain its export competitiveness, it would deepen China's dependence on the US market and Treasury bonds as an outlet for its expanding current account surplus. On the other hand, while a RMB revaluation would facilitate China's long overdue economic rebalancing and reduce its dependence on the US, the resulting unravelling of the long‐entrenched export‐oriented growth could generate large‐scale economic dislocation. No matter how this currency conflict is settled, its final resolution will determine the future of the dollar's global hegemony.
NOVOS ESTUDOS 89 ❙❙ MARÇO 201117 resumo Contra as previsões de que a China substituirá em breve os eua como a principal potência econômica mundial, o autor argumenta que o modelo de crescimento chinês, voltado à exportação e lastreado por enormes reservas em dólares, confinou o país asiático a um papel subordinado, ao qual boa parte de sua elite se mantém comprometida.
PAlAVRAS-chAVE: Economias do Leste Asiático; República Popular da China; modelo de crescimento voltado à exportação; relações econômicas entre China-eua.
AbstrActAgainst predictions that China will soon replace the us as the world' s dominant economic power, the author argues that the prc's exportation-oriented growth and vast dollar reserves have trapped it in a subordinate role -to which much of its elite remains committed.
The original version of this article unfortunately contained mistakes in the formatting of Tables 2 and 3. The errors are listed below: 1. In Table 2, the standard errors in parenthesis should be below the correlation coefficients. 2. In Table 3, the standard errors in parenthesis are properly placed below the correlation coefficients as they should be, but most of the columns are misaligned.The original article has been corrected.Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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