China has little choice but to buy dollars: CIC official
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China should not worry about being too heavily invested in the dollar and US government debt, because its dependence is not unique in a world with few alternatives, a senior official at China's sovereign fund said.
Wang Jianxi, the chief risk officer at China Investment Corporation (CIC) which manages $300 billion, said Saturday the market for US Treasuries is the world's most liquid and the US government is a credible borrower.
He said these qualities render dollar-denominated assets relatively stable and that there are few investment alternatives in the world with similar benefits.
"We don't have to complain about the risk of buying US dollars and Treasuries and the need to invest in other countries," Wang told an investment forum, adding that the views were his own.
"Investing in other countries does not necessarily make our investment less risky," he said.
China is the world's biggest foreign holder of US Treasuries, with a third of its $2.85 trillion in foreign exchange reserves invested in US government debt.
But Wang argued that China is not the only nation reliant on the dollar, listing sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi, Norway and Singapore as buyers of dollar-denominated assets. Wang said the attention China drew last year for buying Japanese and South Korean sovereign debt underscored the difficulties of investing in smaller debt markets. It is also practical for China to invest the bulk of its reserves in the US currency because global trade in commodities, energy and metals are settled in dollars, he said. There is little choice but to invest a large portion of foreign reserves in US dollars and Treasuries," Wang said.
