Dubai's debt crisis could provide China an opportunity to snap up oil and gold assets to diversify its foreign exchange investments, state-run press quoted a senior official as saying today.
"This may give China an investment opportunity to use part of its foreign reserves to buy gold and oil reserves," said Ji Xiaonan, head of the supervisory board of the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
Ji's comments appeared in the Economic Information Daily.
Global gold and oil prices were hit last week after a shock request by the government in Dubai that its creditors delay repayment of the massive debts at flagship conglomerate Dubai World.
China's forex reserves, the world's largest, stood at $2.27 trillion at the end of September, much of it invested in US dollar assets such as safe but low-yielding US Treasury bonds.
But there have been calls from some officials and economists to invest the reserves in natural resources and gold in order to diversify and hedge against the weakness in the dollar.
Chinese companies have been pouring money into oil and other raw materials overseas, such as in Africa, to fuel the needs of its expanding economy.