HONG KONG — The head of the International Monetary Fund has urged China to fix its economic imbalances, saying the country of 1.4 billion people is too big to rely on exports for its growth.
China’s global exports have been rising while shipments to the United States have contracted after President Donald Trump hiked taxes on imports from China and many other countries. Earlier this week, Beijing reported its trade surplus for 2025 had already exceeded a record $1 trillion.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said the heavy reliance on exports risks provoking more moves by its trading partners to curb imports from China.
“(China’s) continuing to depend on export-led growth risks furthering global trade tensions,” Georgieva told a press conference on Wednesday. “China is now too big to rely on exports as a source for growth… and (it has) a large domestic market that can be a big aspiration for growth in the years to come.”
At a high-level meeting in October aimed at drawing up plans for the next five years, China’s leaders highlighted the need to boost domestic consumption. The ruling Communist Party has long sought to rebalance the economy away from heavy dependence both on exports and on massive investment in infrastructure.
But the COVID-19 pandemic intervened, along with a prolonged downturn in the real estate market that has slowed activity for that once powerful engine for growth. Meanwhile, Beijing has pushed hard to expand manufacturing in high-tech industries, struggling to rein i