US Treasury Secretary Urges IMF to Tighten Oversight of China's Distortive Policies

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly called in Washington on the 14th for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to further strengthen its policy tools and monitoring mechanisms to effectively address the increasingly severe distortive policies in the current global economy, which are gravely undermining the level playing field in cross-border markets. Although Bessent did not directly name any specific country during his remarks, the core issues targeted in his speech led observers to widely believe that his finger was pointed squarely at China's long-standing state capitalism and market-interventionist policies. This statement not only highlights the Washington administration's continued pressure on Beijing in its economic and trade strategy, but also introduces new variables into the future policy directions of international multilateral financial institutions.

Bessent's focus on the IMF aims to push the world's highest-level financial monitoring institution to confront structural trade imbalances. For a long time, the US government and other Western industrialized nations have repeatedly accused China of using massive state subsidies, state-owned enterprise dominance, distorted credit allocation, and exchange rate manipulation to grant its domestic industries an unfair competitive advantage in international markets. These practices, known as distortive policies, have led to frequent global overcapacity phenomena, severely suppressing the survival space of manufacturing sectors in other countries and even triggering a new wave of protectionism. The US Treasury Department hopes to use the IMF's multilateral platform to incorporate these non-market behaviors into stricter global economic reviews and policy coordination.

As a core institution of international financial governance established after World War II, the IMF's primary responsibilities were originally to promote global monetary cooperation, ensure financial stability, facilitate international trade, and promote high employment and sustainable economic growth. However, with the evolution of globalization and the intensification of geopolitical competition, member states have long been divided over the organization's functional positioning in addressing non-traditional economic challenges. This time, through the voice of its Treasury Secretary, the US is pressuring the IMF to expand its traditional macroeconomic surveillance mandate to include deep-seated industrial policies and market competition distortions into routine assessments. This will inevitably spark fierce discussions and maneuvering within the IMF, particularly from the resistance of emerging markets and developing economies.

From the macro perspective of global economic, trade, and geopolitics, the competition between the US and China has expanded comprehensively from mere bilateral tariff barriers to a contest for the right to set international rules. The US is actively utilizing traditional multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the IMF, and the World Bank to construct a defense line containing the Chinese economic model. However, because the IMF's decision-making weights and voting mechanisms reflect the power structure of global economic power, any reforms regarding the expansion of review authority or targeting specific economic models must obtain the consent of the majority of member states. Therefore, Bessent's call is not only a direct attack on Chinese policies, but also a major stress test of the governance capacity of international multilateral institutions.

This development will have a profound impact on the future international economic and trade order and financial stability. If the IMF eventually complies with US demands to strengthen the monitoring and evaluation of distortive competitive policies, it will help enhance the transparency of global economic policies and provide victimized countries with more multilateral negotiation leverage and data support. Conversely, if the institution falls into a deadlock due to geopolitical confrontation, it may further weaken the authority of the multilateral system in resolving global economic imbalances. In any case, the US side targeting China's economic intervention policies has once again brought the institutional conflict between global capitalism and state-led economies to the forefront, becoming a focus of intense international attention. (Source of facts: Central News Agency)