Читать книгу The United States vs. China - C. Fred Bergsten - Страница 15

Article XIII:1 of the charter of the IMF requires that “the principal office of the Fund shall be located in the territory of the member having the largest quota,” i.e., its largest shareholder. The World Bank has a similar provision (Article V:9). These requirements were written into the charters in 1944 to ensure that the key financial institutions would be located in the United States.

That premise has gone unchallenged for 75 years but will have to be revisited over the next several decades if China moves into a clearly superior position in terms of global economic presence, as projected in chapter 3. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde mused as early as 2014 that “the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days the IMF is headquartered in Beijing” (Reuters 2014). China is now providing $50 million to fund a modest China–IMF Capacity Development Center in Beijing, administered by the Fund to offer courses on core IMF policy to students drawn half-and-half from China and developing countries (Dollar 2020).

IMF quotas are supposed to be reviewed every five years to make sure that they faithfully reflect changes in the international status of the member countries. The last major realignment was agreed in 2010, with decisions made at that year’s G-20 summit in Seoul, to significantly increase the shares of China and a few other emerging market economies, largely at the expense of several European countries. The quotas are notionally based on formulas that have been negotiated over the years and “adjusted” judgmentally when final decisions are made. The formulas encompass four variables. The first and largest, with a 50% weight, is countries’ economic size, measured by their Gross Domestic Products (GDPs); these are in turn a blended combination with a 60% weighting for GDP at market exchange rates, and a 40% weighting for purchasing power parity (PPP) rates. The second main variable (at 30%) is a country’s exposure to the world economy, measured by its share of world trade. The third component is the variability (and hence vulnerability) of a country’s international economic position. The final component, with a weight of only 5%, is a country’s international reserve position.

Table 1.1 presents the current array of IMF quotas among the three largest currency issuers (United States, eurozone, China); a calculation of where they should be now if the formulas were applied faithfully; and projections of what the formulas would suggest for future quota allocation out to 2050 on the basis of our projections of economic and trade growth in chapter 3. They show that China is substantially under-represented now, would probably move into the top quota slot according to the formula by 2030 – ahead of the United States, and since the eurozone is not a country (see below) – and will clearly be in the lead by 2050 (even if its growth declines to 4 percent after 2030 and 3 percent after 2040). If the IMF and World Bank adhere to the mandates of their charters, China should therefore become the host of their headquarters by the middle of this century if the postulated economic developments come to pass.

Table 1.1 IMF quotas: Projections to 2050 on current IMF formula

Note: Assume openness, variability, reserves remain constant over time. GDP projections are from IMF until 2024. Starting from 2025, GDP growth rates are specified as in the table. Euro includes 19 eurozone countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain. Euro quota is the sum of quotas of these 19 countries.

Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook (October 2019).

The United States and some other IMF members, however, will undoubtedly insist on negotiating the terms of that shift to make sure that China would faithfully implement all fundamental IMF requirements, as they negotiated for 15 years on China’s entry to the WTO and are now seeking to negotiate changes in China’s trade policies before according it the promised “market economy status.” To avoid the cost and inconvenience of actually moving headquarters, China could of course ask for some other major recognition of its status, such as the selection of a Chinese national as Managing Director (De Gregorio et al. 2018). Other alternatives can also be envisaged, such as the proposal in the text (chapter 10) that the quotas of China and the United States converge to equal levels over time, to recognize the rough equivalency that is likely to characterize their economic relationship in the decades ahead. Another possibility would be for China, if it continues to lead the world in providing development finance, to take the top spot at the World Bank while the United States stayed at no. 1 at the IMF (or vice versa).

A possible complication is the position of the eurozone. The 19 members of the euro area now have a combined quota much larger than the United States and would have a claim to become the new host “country” (Frankfurt? Brussels? Paris?) if they could agree to consolidate their representation and speak with a single voice (although the IMF charter refers to “member countries” and it is unclear whether a currency area would qualify). China’s projected growth path would not place it beyond the eurozone before 2050 if its growth rate were to drop to 4 percent after 2030 and 3 percent after 2040, so the “rough equivalency” formulation could apply to the zone as well as to the United States and China.

The trade war between the United States and China has obscured the more fundamental competition between the two countries for global economic leadership. History shows that conflict between rising China and incumbent power United States is a real possibility; there is clearly a risk of an economic variant (at least) of the “Thucydides trap” (Allison 2018). Power transition theory suggests that risk is greatest during the decade or two when the newcomer is approaching and reaching the level of the previous leader, which is right now and the years immediately ahead. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a China expert, calls this “the decade of living dangerously” (Rudd 2021).

The trade, investment, and technology wars of the last few years confirm that these risks are very real. US efforts so far have failed to restrain China or induce changes in Chinese policies that are needed to ease the conflicts. This competition is likely to be one of the most sustained, as well as most important, features of the world economy (and world politics more broadly) for the foreseeable future.