The Chinese exchange rate has been the focus of discussion for many months, with bothinternal and external considerations seemingly pointing to the desirability of a currencyrevaluation. This paper draws from the lessons of international experience with exchange-rate regimes in the period since World War Two. It lays out the conditions necessary tovalidate a fixed exchange rate and some intermediate regimes that might work when a fixedrate is inappropriate. It then discusses what the analysis implies for contemporary China.