I have explained why I think the latter is a better description of the global balance of payments disequilibrium several times in my blog, the last time in a June 4 entry (“Chinese savings and US deficits”) and in two longer entries on September 15.  As I pointed out in those entries, I think a very plausible argument can be made that the 1997 Asian financial crisis created such a strong impression on Asian policy makers that their decision to protect themselves from a reoccurrence prompted them to put into place very strong mercantilist policies guaranteed to save them from a future external debt crisis.  This implied substantial trade surpluses and rising reserves.  It also required that some other country or countries be willing and able to run corresponding current account deficits.

 

The data show that after 1997-1998 Asian current account surpluses grew so quickly, and central bank reserve accumulation along with it, that for the first time developing countries as a group became net exporters of capital when reserve accumulation exceeded net private capital inflows (you can find the actual numbers in Jorg Bibow’s “The International Monetary (Non-)Order and the Global Capital Flows Paradox”).  China was by far the biggest factor in this process, and of course as long as China was running such a policy, it needed to invest those surpluses.  They were invested in the US.