EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Measuring Net Foreign Assets: The Case of China

Chao Zhu ()

China & World Economy, 2010, vol. 18, issue 5, 90-104

Abstract: This paper discusses two methods of measuring net foreign assets(NFA): directly using the financial account and indirectly using the current account. The former method is found to be more accurate than the latter method. The paper also includes a detailed discussion of the valuation methodology. The results show that China's NFA are much lower than the cumulative current account surplus or the cumulative foreign exchange reserves. This leads to an underestimation of growth in foreign direct investment and an overestimation of the capacity of foreign exchange reserves to cope with possible withdrawals. Therefore, the Chinese Government should pay more attention to valuation issues to obtain more accurate measurement of NF A. Meanwhile, the Chinese monetary authority should relax its control on the foreign exchange settlement system, allow the private sector to hold a certain amount of foreign exchange, and encourage foreign assets to be denominated in RMB to solve structural problems, including entity and currency mismatch.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-124X.2010.01214.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:chinae:v:18:y:2010:i:5:p:90-104

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1671-2234

Access Statistics for this article

China & World Economy is currently edited by Yongding Yu

More articles in China & World Economy from Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:18:y:2010:i:5:p:90-104