It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

《双城记》查尔斯・狄更斯

http://www.youtube.com/harvard#p/c/546CD09EA2399DAB/2/HS263kcm8Jc

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China Investment Corp, the sovereign wealth fund, will soon receive $100bn to $200bn in new funds from the government, according to three people familiar with the matter.

CIC, which has fully allocated the $110bn it had available for offshore investments, is to get the new money as Beijing seeks to reduce its exposure to US government debt. A number of senior officials, including the central bank governor, have said China’s foreign exchange reserves are beyond “reasonable requirements”.

The reserves, already the largest in the world, grew by nearly $200bn in the first quarter to top $3,000bn for the first time. In the past week, two senior government economists have said China only needs reserves of around $1,000bn.

CIC was established in 2007 with the mandate to invest some foreign reserves in riskier offshore assets. At that time, China had less than $1,500bn in its foreign exchange coffers. The fund suffered early missteps, investing in US private equity firm Blackstone and in Morgan Stanley before their shares plummeted in the financial crisis. But people who deal with CIC say it has grown in professionalism and confidence.

“They had a lot of growing pains in the beginning but now they know more,” says one private equity executive.

In addition to handing more money to CIC, Beijing is considering using the reserves to set up new special-purpose funds that would invest in sectors such as energy and precious metals, as well as a foreign-exchange stabilisation fund, according to a Chinese media report on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

Debate has raged among policymakers in Beijing over how much more money CIC should receive, while the central bank and the ministry of finance have fought a bureaucratic turf war over whether the central bank should have more control over the fund. “There has been bureaucratic bickering for a year,” said one person familiar with the matter. “It has been difficult to resolve.”

The central bank had proposed that the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, an agency under the central bank that manages the forex reserves, either invest directly as a shareholder in CIC or hand CIC a mandate to manage a certain amount of reserves on its behalf.

Those suggestions were rejected, according to people familiar with the matter, and CIC will now probably receive the money from the finance ministry, its shareholder, as occurred when it was initially capitalised in 2007.

After initial investments in western financial institutions CIC has focused on offshore investments that take advantage of China’s economic boom.

RockBund.

Master Developer for Redevelopment of Historic Bund in Shanghai

RockBund is a 94,000 square meter urban mixed-use redevelopment project at the historic confluence of the Huangpu River and Suzhou Creek in downtown Shanghai. The project combines the restoration of 11 historical buildings with new, world-class architecture and a new public space infrastructure. RockBund will form a major part of the Waitanyuan redevelopment district, a city-led “key” development project that will transform the area. Waitanyuan combines new infrastructure, parks, waterfront, historic restoration and new buildings- hotels, boutiques, department stores, theaters and cultural venues and residential space – to revitalize the northern tip of the Bund and create the most fashionable neighborhood in Shanghai.
 

http://www.rockbund.com/index.htm