CFR senior fellow. Views are my own. Retweets are not endorsements. Writes on sovereign debt and capital flows.
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One meaning of a balance of payments deficit is a current account deficit in excess of financial inflows, and thus a draw on reserves -- something that happens in emerging economies, but not generally in advanced economies with floating exchange rates.
The IMF's 16% estimate in the Article IV was based on China's current account surplus though q3. The q4 data showed a bigger than expected surplus -- it pulled the full year surplus from 3.3% of GDP to 3.7% of GDP, changing the IMF's math ...
I should note that this adjustment matters less for December than for previous months -- but cleaning up the data for the rest of the year helps isolate the trend
the tariff front running is obvious in the import data for q1 2025 (heavily pharma and gold, which weren't tariffed in the end). there was some payback later in the year ... I think the December uptick in imports tho is a real signal
James Mayger and Jorgelina Do Rosario of Bloomberg reminded me that the 2024 staff report didn't mention external imbalances at all -- so there has been an important evolution in the IMF's thinking in the last couple of years
Goldman's forecast -- which is almost certainly better than the IMF's forthcoming forecast -- isn't that bold. The customs surplus net of tourism (travel) is already 5% of GDP, and that should be a reasonable estimate of the surplus of a country with a positive NIIP!
The total offshore assets of SAFE, the CIC, the SCBs (over $1.5 trillion now) and the policy banks likely approaches $7 trillion. SAFE's securities holdings top $3 trillion & other investors hold ~ $700b in foreign securities ...
The official US data on foreign holdings doesn't show any basis for Chinese concern -- China's Treasuries in US custodianship (in theory state accounts as well as state bank accounts) are heading down not up
It is quite clear that state bank purchases (and in 23/ early 24 sales) of fx have replaced PBOC purchases and sales and the core technique China uses to manage the band around the daily fx -- i.e. settlement looks like an intervention variable
This seems clear 
Japan's net holdings of bonds (net of foreign holdings of JGBs) is close to 50% of its GDP (a creditor position as big v GDP as the US net det position). That includes $1 trillion in bonds held in Japan's $1.175 trillion in reserves, + over $2 trillion in other holdings
14m cars would be roughly 1/4th of the global market for cars outside China (the Chinese market is ~ 25m cars) ... no way that doesn't have a disruptive impact. 
For the big 3 collectively, portfolio flows map well to the current account surplus -- which is a common outcome now that there is less intermediation via the central bank. Denmark's portfolio flows tho are now a bit smaller than its accumulated surplus
Passenger car imports are down to half a million, and falling fast ... no market for the world there
Maybe the IMF's data is off, but it has the general government deficit in 2025 at under 2 pp pf GDP (way better than the US) and it likely would be ~ 2% of GDP even with Takaichi's 0.7 pp of GDP(?) stimulus
. @KeithBradsher covered this well is the Times' story on China's 5% (shock, shock) reported growth in 2025 ... which understandably (being non-news) got overshadowed by the real news over Trump's Greenland/ peace prize obsession