"China Toys With Biting Hand Feeding Its Surplus"

John Berry:

China Toys With Biting Hand Feeding Its Surplus, by John M. Berry, Bloomberg: If Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is so worried about the safety of China’s investment in U.S. Treasury securities, he can order the money be moved elsewhere.

Of course, that likely would drive down the value of the dollar, push up U.S. interest rates and cause huge losses in China’s $700 billion portfolio of Treasuries.

The reality is that Wen and China are stuck. They have no viable alternative so long as China continues to accumulate large amounts of foreign currencies as a result of its big trade surplus. ... [C]ontinuation of a big trade surplus is ... critical to China -- something Wen conveniently forgets. ...

There will still be a large deficit to be financed, and China and the U.S. will still be intertwined both economically and financially. Wen must know that.

What he doesn’t seem to accept is that anything he and other senior Chinese officials do to raise questions about U.S. creditworthiness or the value of the dollar could come back to haunt them.