China and the U.S. Dollar

November 30, 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Manoa Campus, John A. Burns Hall 3012, 3rd floor

---

Presentation by: Paul Bowles, University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. For the past three years, the U.S. administration has been publicly pressuring China’s policy-makers to allow the renminbi to appreciate. In response, China’s policy-makers have made small steps in this direction but have sought to resist U.S. pressure and the People’s Bank has intervened to support the value of the U.S. dollar in foreign exchange markets. As we look to the future, however, China’s reemergence on the global economic scene raises the possibility of role reversal. Will China’s rising economic power and burgeoning monetary muscle lead to pressures on the dollar which might threaten its value and its role as the international reserve currency? If this were to occur, then it would likely lead to the U.S. Administration urging the Chinese to support the value of the dollar and not to move out of holding dollar reserves.

In this paper, co-written with Baotai Wang, we look into the medium –term to see what might be in store for the U.S. dollar. We conclude that while both the U.S. and China have strong interests in preserving a stable international economic and monetary order, the role of the dollar in it depends on how well enduring bilateral imbalances and complex interests are managed.

Paul Bowles is Professor of Economics and International Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia. He specializes in globalization, regionalism and East Asian development. He is a Past-President of the Canadian Society for the Study of International Development and is also an Honorary Professor at Hebei University, PRC, a Profesor Asociados, Doctorado en Estudios del Desarrollo, Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, Mexico and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide, Australia. His publications include Capitalism (London: Pearson, 2007), The Political Economy of Financial Reform in China: Finance in Late Development (with Gordon White, Westview Press, 1993) as well as articles in journals such as the Journal of Development Studies, World Development, Cambridge Journal of Economics, New Political Economy, Review of International Political Economy and the Journal of Comparative Economics. He is a co-editor of the forthcoming volumes entitled National Perspectives on Globalization: A Critical Reader and Regional Perspectives on Globalization: A Critical Reader to be published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Ticket Information
Seminar is free and open to the public. Seating is first-come, first-serve.

Event Sponsor
East-West Center, UH Manoa

More Information
Kristin Uyemura, (808) 944-7725, uyemurak@eastwestcenter.org, http://www.eastwestcenter.org/events-ce-detail.asp?conf_ID=940

---

 

Ongoing Events