China will have a current account surplus of over $200b this year.  China has about 1.3 billion people.   The GCC countries (Saudi Arabia and the small states on the Gulf) will also have a current account surplus of around $200b this year, and they only have something like 50 million people …

There are no shortage of critics – and defenders -- of China’s (de facto) dollar peg. 

The GCC’s peg to the dollar – which is now even tighter than China’s peg to the dollar – has attracted a lot less attention.  It has far fewer critics, and fewer defenders.    I can immediately think of only four real critics of the GCC peg: yours truly, Jeff Frankel of Harvard, Steve Brice of Standard Chartered, and one of the Economists’ writers (Pam Woodall?) on the global economy.

But it certainly helps to have the Economist on your side.