China's forex reserves and investment
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China's export boom in the last three decades helped the nation accumulate the world's largest holding of foreign reserves. Following are the key facts about the massive stockpile and how China invested with the asset.
-- China's foreign reserves was only 167 million U.S. dollars in 1978 before China initiated the opening up and reform policy. It grew slowly in the 1980's with no more than 5 billion U.S. dollars being accumulated each year between 1978 and 1988.
-- The foreign reserves exceeded 100 billion U.S. dollars in November 1996, and the figure doubled in five years.
-- As China's exports grew rapidly in the past decade, China overtook Japan as the world's biggest holder of foreign reserves in February 2006. The asset hit 1 trillion U.S. dollars in October of that year, and rocketed to 2 trillion U.S. dollars in July 2009.
-- The asset was worth nearly 2.4 trillion U.S. dollars at the end of 2009, or about one third of the world's total.
-- China is the biggest foreign holder of the U.S. government debt as 894.8 billion U.S. dollars of foreign reserves were invested on the U.S. treasury bills by the end of last year.
-- As the U.S. fiscal deficit hit record this year following the unprecedented monetary expansion in the United States, fears are rising that the value of China's massive holding of the U.S. dollar asset is eroded.
-- China set up its own sovereign wealth fund, or China Investment Corporation (CIC) on Sept. 29, 2007, to diversify investment of the hefty reserves.
-- CIC's overseas investment portfolio includes equity, fixed-income asset, hedge fund, private equity, commodities and real estate.
-- The company also bought stocks of many global business leaders such as the Blackstone Group and Morgan Stanley.
