【英语中国】Lex专栏：中国外汇储备管理无新意

It is always tempting to imagine the managers of China's reserves cackling in the counting house, devising ways to boost or destabilise a particular region. But the reality is a lot more prosaic, and more passive.

Sure, the reserves division of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange has a lot to play with. Managers were sitting on $2,447bn at the end of March, or 31 per cent of the world's non-gold reserve assets – a bigger share than the next five nations put together. And yes, there are elements of active management: witness the growing allocations to CIC, the main sovereign wealth fund, and more direct lending from Safe itself, such as the $60bn of loan-for-oil swaps within the past year. But the basic composition of reserves is a function of trade surpluses, foreign direct investment, speculative inflows and non-renminbi borrowings by Chinese corporates, over all of which Safe has little if any control.

Any attempt to rebalance assets in any direction carries big risks. While there may be valid reasons for China to fear losses on its euro holdings, for example, any sell-off will only add to the region's problems. As Royal Bank of Scotland notes, why would China risk upsetting the European Union, a major trading partner and important counterweight to US influence?

Safe's opacity, of course, encourages Kremlinology. But the reality is that China's reserves, though much bigger than anyone else's, probably look much the same: invested largely in ultra-low-yielding, short-term government bonds. And given that the pace of reserves growth tends to shrink when the US dollar is strong – reducing the dollar value of non-dollar assets – the pile is likely to be skewed about two-thirds to the US dollar and a quarter to the euro. Again, just like everybody else's.

人们总是忍不住设想这样的场景：中国外汇储备的管理者们一面在会计室内高声谈笑，一面想方设法巩固或动摇某一地区。但是，现实要比这无趣得多，也被动得多。

的确，中国国家外汇管理局(SAFE)储备管理司有足够的本钱折腾。截至今年3月底，中国的外汇储备管理者们坐拥2.447万亿美元，占全球非黄金储备资产的31%——比紧随其后的五个国家的总和都大。没错，中国外汇储备的管理也存在一些积极主动的元素：过去一年里，人们看到，中国政府向该国主要主权财富基金——中国投资公司(CIC)的拨款不断增长，外管局自身也加大了直接贷款的投放，例如总计600亿美元的“贷款换石油”协议。但是，中国外汇储备的基本构成是由贸易顺差、外国直接投资(FDI)、“热钱”流入和中国企业非人民币借款决定的——对于上述各项因素，外管局几乎毫无控制权。

对中国来说，向任何方向重新平衡资产的任何努力都蕴含巨大风险。举例来说，尽管中国可能有令人信服的理由担心自己所持的欧元资产蒙受损失，但它对欧元资产的任何抛售都只会加重欧元区的问题。正如苏格兰皇家银行(RBS)指出的，中国为何要冒险扰乱欧盟的秩序呢。欧盟是中国的一个主要贸易伙伴和制衡美国影响力的一支重要力量，不是吗？

当然，外管局的隐秘作风，使人们不得不沿用研究前苏联机构的那一套研究方法。但实际上，中国外汇储备虽然规模比其它国家都大得多，但看上去可能与它们并没什么不同：都以投资收益率极低的短期政府债券为主。此外，考虑到中国外汇储备的增速趋缓，而美元同时又在走强（导致非美元资产的美元价值下降），其构成很可能是美元约占三分之二，欧元约占四分之一。同样，这与其它国家如出一辙。

Lex专栏是由FT评论家联合撰写的短评，对全球经济与商业进行精辟分析

译者/汪洋