The most extraordinary contribution to this debate has come from the International Monetary Fund, whose April 2010 World Economic Outlook contains a chapter on how adjustment by surplus countries can be generally beneficial. The recommendation, which contains a long section trying to show that Japan’s 1987 and 1988 experience was not damaging, will be read in China simply as a statement that the US wants China to follow Japan in committing what amounts to economic hara-kiri.