Adekwatność poziomu i struktury rezerw dewizowych Chin
Adequacy of size and structure of China’s foreign exchange reserves

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to analyze the strategic aspects of the management of Chinese foreign exchange reserves in the context of dynamic reserve accumulation in this country. It is hypothesized that due to the rapid accumulation of foreign exchange reserves their level in China remains at the suboptimal level and this makes the effective management challenging and creates costs and risks for the Chinese economy. The methods applied include the analysis of statistical data concerning foreign exchange reserves and macroeconomic variables that characterize the Chinese economy as well as comparative analysis and literature study. It is found that the level of Chinese foreign exchange reserves has exceeded the traditional adequacy metrics and remains suboptimal. Bearing this in mind, the author points out that the management of Chinese foreign exchange reserves does not meet one of its primary objectives, namely ensuring adequate level of reserves. It leads to the increased costs of holding reserves since the fraction of reserves deemed as excessive is not necessary to ensure the proper fulfi llment of their functions. Moreover, the analysis of geographical, currency and investment structure of Chinese foreign exchange reserves indicates that the investment strategy remains conservative since the vast majority of reserves is invested in dollar assets, especially in US treasury securities. The aforementioned concentration leads to various costs and risks. However, the analysis suggests an ongoing change in the investment strategy with the aim of increasing reserves profi tability. The main symptoms of such a change is a rising share of equities in the Chinese foreign exchange reserves.

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