HONG KONG — The report by the International Monetary Fund on China published the week before last got less attention than it deserved, yet it is worth looking at what the IMF said.
One surprise was that the report was published at all. For the previous four years, IMF officials had done their economic reporting on China under regular Article IV consultations, but Beijing blocked publication. Exactly why the rulers in Beijing relented this time is open to cynical speculation.
A blogger for The Economist commented that poor countries fear the IMF and suppress its reports; middle- income countries quarrel with the fund but publish; and rich countries are powerful enough to publish but ignore IMF recommendations. On this basis, then, China has graduated.