China Investment Corporation (CIC) has transformed its initial investment strategy of focusing mainly on the US financial sector during 2007–08 into a new strategy of diversified investments across geography and sectors since 2009. Massive financial losses and domestic political backlash...

This paper is a tentative endeavour to delineate the potential of the renminbi to become a global currency. It first analyses the critical economic, financial and policy attributes that are required to support a currency to gain an international role. It then examines whether China has the...

As the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region reaches the 10th anniversary of the territory’s reunion with its sovereign in China this year, it faces several looming competitive challenges from its ambitious and aggressive “sister†cities on the mainland. Going forward, without...

This paper examines Singapore’s two sovereign wealth funds (SWFs)-the Government Investment Corporation of Singapore (GIC) and Temasek Holdings (Temasek)—and the political risks which they are exposed to in their overseas investments. Wu argues that Temasek has hitherto exposed...

The sovereign wealth club acquired a new member with the official launch of the China Investment Corporation (CIC) on 29 September 2007. The arrival of CIC has further heated up the debate on sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and their potential implications for global financial markets. This is...

Since the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis in mid-1997, the gulf between the Northeast Asian economies and Southeast Asian economies has widened as measured by GDP growth rates and size, direct and portfolio investment flows, stock market capitalisation and trading turnover, as well as...

Recent high-profile international acquisitions and take-over bids by Chinese companies have attracted much media limelight and raised intense interest in China’s rising outward foreign direct investment (FDI). This paper delineates the macro trends of China’s outward FDI based on...

This paper examines shifts in Temasek Holding’s (Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund) investment and risk management strategies since the 2008–09 global financial crisis (GFC), as well as the risks it has faced in recent years. Our findings reveal that the shift in...

This paper examines whether the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) and its subsidiary SAFE Investment Company (SIC), the sole managers of China’s gargantuan official foreign exchange reserves (OFER) until 2007, have shifted their investment behaviour since the inception of...

There has been much hype about China’s rapid ascent in the world economy. For instance, economists from Goldman Sachs and the OECD have predicted that the Chinese economy will overtake the Japanese and the US economies well before the mid–21st century. However, these optimistic,...