CFR senior fellow. Views are my own. Retweets are not endorsements. Writes on sovereign debt and capital flows.
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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
In a sane world of course the US should care about this -- but Trump is already taking credit for the (irrelevant) fall in the bilateral deficit with China, and seems poised to focus his trade policy (ha!) on the non-Ireland EU and Canada ...
About half the US trade deficit with Europe/ the European surplus with the US (~ $100b) is trade in tax (i.e. pharmaceutical trade). Ex Pharma, the EU now exports ~ $400b to the US and imports ~ $300b. Big numbers, no doubt, but materially less than if pharma is included
Some obvious reasons for the spike, which maps to ongoing reports of SCB purchases in November:
Even adjusting for Euroclear (part owned by the PBOC incidentally) and short-term holdings, there is no visible net flow from China into the US bond market over the last 8 years ... 
The balance of payments data doesn't provide any detail on hedging -- but the total flow into US bonds has been pretty stable at a $600-700b annual pace. And (net) inflows into US equities have been unusually strong (and equity flows typically are not hedged)