如何建设更加公平与包容的全球金融安全网

2 Abstract The frequent breakouts of international financial crises require the establishment of a global financial safety net. The current global financial safety net includes the IMF, regional financing arrangements, bilateral swap agreements, and foreign exchange reserves of various countries. After the burst of the global financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic, the current safety net faces the threat of fragmentation. To meet the numerous challenges ahead, we propose to build a more equitable and inclusive global financial safety net designated to provide financial assistance for countries in need. Our policy suggestions include: (1) boosting the reform of the IMF's funding sources and quotas, and consolidating the IMF's pivot position in the global financial safety net. (2) broadening the coverage and enhancing the role of regional financial arrangements. (3) using the IMF as a platform to strengthen collaboration between different levels. (4) preventing new risks generated by new (sovereign) digital currencies. 3 The Challenge With global economic uncertainties rising and international financial crises breaking out frequently, it is of great significance to strengthen the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN). The current GFSN includes four parts: the first is foreign exchange reserves at the national level; the second is bilateral swap agreements (BSAs) between countries; the third is regional financing agreements (RFAs); and the fourth is the IMF at the multilateral level. The current GFSN is more fragmented than in the past, and individual countries and regions have access to different sizes and types of financial assistance (Denbee et al 2016). The current GFSN cannot guarantee the stability of the global financial system, nor can it cope with systemic financial risks, especially after the experiences of the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 epidemic. The current GFSN is more of a suboptimal patchwork than a systematic design (Shafik, 2015), and its structure is facing the following five challenges. First, accumulating foreign exchange reserves is inefficient, and the risk of being sanctioned by powerful countries like the US is gradually rising. Nonetheless, individual countries’ foreign exchange reserves remain the largest component of the GFSN. However, reserve accumulation brings several problems. First, the cost of holding reserves is high, and the return from it is low. Most of reserve assets are low-yield, low-risk foreign government bonds, and they are exposed to both valuation and foreign exchange risks. For example, from 2022 to 2023, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates 13 times in a row, causing a sharp price decline in U.S. Treasury bonds. Emerging market countries (EMEs), which invest a large proportion of foreign exchange reserves in U.S. Treasury bonds, suffered large valuation losses. Second, foreign exchange reserves are 4 distributed very unevenly across different regions. Moreover, on some occa