Before the 1997/98 crisis, the East Asian economies except for Japan informally pegged their currencies to the dollar. These soft pegs made them vulnerable to a depreciating yen, thereby aggravating the crisis. To limit future misalignments, the IMF wants East Asian currencies to float freely....

We argue that criticism concerning the Chinese dollar peg is misplaced as no predictable link exists between the exchange rate and the trade balance of an international creditor economy. The stable nominal yuan/dollar rate is argued to have stabilized Chinese, East Asian and global growth....

China has been provoked into speeding renminbi internationalization. But despite rapid growth in offshore financial markets in RMB, the Chinese authorities are essentially trapped into maintaining exchange controls-reinforced by financial repression in domestic interest rates→to avoid an...