China ran a very large current-account surplus during the early 2000s and accumulated a vast stock of foreign reserves – including at least several trillion dollars’ worth of US Treasury debt. Although this looks impressive on paper, reserves of this magnitude are essentially useless.
但随着时间的推移，中国经验的其他部分效果在减弱。21世纪最初几年中，中国存在巨额经常项目盈余，累积了庞大的外汇储备存量——包括至少数万亿美元的美国国债。尽管从纸面上看，这令人印象深刻，但如此规模的储备实际上毫无用处。如果中国要出售它的美国资产，美元就会贬值，美国公司也将更容易出口和与进口竞争。