China Foreign Exchange Manager Calls U.S. Global ‘Bright Spot’

Source: Bloomberg

The U.S. may be a “bright spot” for the global economy in 2013, with Europe and Japan “not optimistic,” said the official who oversees day-to-day management of China’s $3.3 trillion foreign exchange reserves.

Credit expansion and the development of the alternative energy industry will help make the U.S. “the major power promoting global economic growth in the future,” said Huang Guobo, director of the foreign exchange reserves management department at China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange. A summery of Huang’s comments, made Dec. 16 at Tsinghua University’s Shenzhen campus, was published on a school website today.

China, the largest foreign lender to the U.S. government, increased its Treasuries holdings in October to a five-month high of $1.16 trillion, according to U.S. Treasury Department data released on Dec. 18. SAFE doesn’t publish data on its investments and Huang, also the foreign exchange regulator’s chief economist, didn’t directly comment on China’s holdings.

“Buying U.S. treasuries is a good choice for China now because the dollar is expected to appreciate,” Liu Dongliang, a foreign exchange analyst with China Merchants Bank in Shenzhen, said by phone today. “Also, the credit risk of U.S. government debt is lower than European and Japanese bonds."

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-25/china-foreign-exchange-manager-calls-u-s-global-bright-spot-.html