IHT published an article on Chinese plans to create new agency, based on Singapore Temasek template, that will manage one trillion of Chinese foreign assets. Article states that it indicates a desire to move towards higher yielding investments, and analysts expect that initial amounts will be modest comparing to overall holdings.

Whatever the amounts are, it seems that we maybe witnessing the beginning of the end of US exorbitant privilege, as stated in a well known article by Gourinchas and Rey. This privilege in short says that US in making 7% on its foreign assets and pays only 3.5% on its foreign liabilities. While this maybe a very long process, already number of large reserve holders (in Asia and in oil exporting countries) indicated their desire to make higher returns than those offered by treasury bond markets.

I have argued for some time, that integration of financial markets in Asia, and possibly even the emergence of asian (ACU, AMU, you name it) as a new currency in 2020 or 2030 will take away this US privilege. I underestimated the speed of changes in XXI century world. Mark-to-market is accompanied by speed-to-market as well.