CHINA AND THE IMF

CHINA TAKES IMF BACK SEAT

Antoaneta Becker

Asia Times, June 1, 2011

LONDON - The sex scandal in the top couloirs of the International Monetary Fund and the power struggle to find a successor to now former managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has fascinated the Chinese. But despite calls and expectations that China will play a prominent role in determining the new IMF chief, Beijing has been reluctant to comment publicly, and it appears far from ready to take its battle for global recognition to the high echelons of the organization.

China has indeed given its backing to an effort by emerging nations to break the tradition of a European always heading the IMF. In a joint statement with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa earlier, China slammed Europe's renewed push to lock the IMF top job, calling its stranglehold "obsolete".

By a convention dating back to its 1945 founding, the head of the IMF has always been European while the World Bank president has been a US citizen. But in the aftermath of the financial crisis some of the pillars of the Bretton-Woods system of monetary management established by world powers after the end of World War II have been repeatedly criticized in China as antiquated.

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