Don Yuan – Chinas selbstsüchtige Wechselkurspolitik und das Internationale Wirtschaftsrecht

The global financial crisis has caused an increased interest in questions of international monetary law again. »Global imbalances« are considered as one major cause of the crisis, in particular the enormous trade deficit run by the United States of America towards China. The People's Republic of China has – like some other countries – operated a rather fixed exchange rate regime which has lead to an unprecedented accumulation of foreign reserves. This behaviour has repeatedly been blamed to constitute »exchange rate manipulation« and American industries demand trade sanctions of different kinds against China. All these claims are based on the allegation that China's exchange rate regime is contrary to the rules of international economic law, in particular the IMF Agreement and/or the WTO agreements. The present paper will try to point out that neither alleged breach is a clear-cut case and that a finding of an infringement of the applicable rules of public international law is very difficult to make.