China has become one of the world’s most important investors and capital exporters, stepping into a new phrase of “GNP” from “GDP” and reversing the mechanism of capital-free flow. So it is imperative to speed up the opening of its capital account.

SDR inclusion will mean an endorsement of the renminbi as an international reserve currency, and at the same time, the Chinese government will have the power and capacity to steer and manage the renminbi exchange rate.

Protectionist U.S. Congressmen are proposing a series of amendments that would enforce currency disciplines for China-U.S. cross-border trading. Rather than protecting import-sensitive sectors with that would penalize developing country producers, Congress and global policymakers would be better off updating the fraying architecture of the international monetary system.

China’s main goals are to give consideration to market supply and the exchange rates of basket currencies, to guide market expectations and to maintain a stable RMB exchange rate -- not to jump on the bandwagon of the “global currency war”. That bodes well for the inclusion of the RMB into the Special Drawing Rights currency basket of the IMF before the end of 2015.

One of the few things the U.S. Congress agrees upon is the problem of “currency manipulation,” especially on the part of China. The concepts of manipulation, or unfair undervaluation, are exceedingly hard to pin down from an economic viewpoint. It is true that China runs a bilateral surplus with the U.S., but as Jeffrey Frankel shows, this has little meaning for the exchange rate and competitiveness of their exports.