what’s stopping China from dropping currency controls in a ab afternoon? It’s not like this is some force of nature.
china won't want to drop the advantages of being able to have such tight control over the flow of yuan.
Maintaining control over capital flight from china, for example.
It's like 6-7 CNY to USD right now. If that goes to 1 or 2 (if the CNY rises dramatically in price wrt the USD), then everything imported from China to the US explodes in price. Explosion in price, the imports reduce dramatically. So Chinese exports, which comprise like a quarter of their GDP, implode.