Two other considerations suggest that China and the middle-income ASEAN countries
will need to increase the flexibility of their exchange rate regimes over time. First, given
that its effects are limited and temporary, foreign exchange market intervention cannot
maintain a real exchange rate at a level significantly different from its fundamental
equilibrium level for more than a short time – much shorter than is likely to be needed
to affect a country’s competitiveness. Maintaining a “competitive” exchange rate that
protects domestic labour intensive industries or allows them a longer time to adjust to
rising wages or other domestic costs – even if it were deemed to be desirable – would
require changes in other fundamental domestic policies, for example in labour market
policies or taxes. The budgetary and other costs of such policies to influence the real
exchange rate would need to be weighed those of alternatives, for example expenditures
on retraining of workers in declining industries, as well as the benefits of using the funds
to meet other objectives. Attempting to delay adjustment of the real exchange rate to its
fundamental equilibrium could also interfere with the shift the need for relative prices
to adjust to induce the reallocation of resources toward higher-productivity sectors in
which a country was gaining in comparative advantage