The Financial Trilemma in China and a Comparative Analysis with India

A key challenge facing most emerging market economies today is how to simultaneouslymaintain monetary independence, exchange rate stability and financial integration subjectto the constraints imposed by the Trilemma, in an era of widespread globalization. In thispaper we overview and contrast the Trilemma policy choices and tradeoffs faced by thetwo key drivers of global economic growth-China and India. China’s Trilemmaconfigurations are unique relative to other emerging markets in the predominance ofexchange rate stability, and in the failure of the Trilemma regression to capture aconsistently significant role for financial integration. In contrast, the Trilemmaconfigurations of India are in line with choices made by other emerging countries. Indialike other emerging economies has overtime converged towards a middle ground betweenthe three policy objectives, and has achieved comparable levels of exchange rate stabilityand financial integration buffered by sizeable international reserves