Asia Needs to Spell Out Changes They Want in International Monetary System

At the recently concluded IMF-World Bank annual meetings, the addition of the yuan to the basket of currencies comprising the IMF's Special Drawing Rights (SDR) was one of the most popular subjects of conversation — not quite as popular, perhaps, as Brexit, Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump, but right behind them.

In this sense, the Fund-Bank meetings were the yuan's coming-out party. The currency's addition into the SDR basket was lauded as a step with great symbolic value. But that step raises the question of what kind of international monetary system China, and Asia more generally, need and how they should construct it.