Report: CIC will not bailout troubled Western banks

China’s $200bn sovereign wealth fund has said that it will not pump money into troubled western financial institutions citing a lack of ‘sincere cooperation’ on the part of the US government.

A senior executive of China Investment Corp has said that the sovereign wealth fund will not bail out distressed Western financial institutions because of unfair restrictions on such investments, according to Reuters.

“On the one hand, the US needs us; on the other hand, they're suspicious toward us. They want us to invest at their will. That's not sincere cooperation,” Reuters quoted Wang Jianxi, a deputy general manager of China Investment Corp, as saying at a Shanghai conference.

The United States government had imposed restrictions on CIC’s investments in the country as it feared that the sovereign wealth fund was controlled by the Communist Party of China and investments made by it could amount to a threat to US national security, the report noted Wang as saying.

On the one hand, the US needs us; on the other hand, they're suspicious toward us. They want us to invest at their will. That's not sincere cooperation

Wang Jianxi

That is the reason why sovereign wealth funds are reluctant to take an active role in tackling the global financial crisis, he added. He also said that China Investment Corp does not buy oil and mining resources in the United States because such investments are not permitted by the US government.

These comments by Wang follow similar statements made by China Investment Corp chairman Lou Jiwei Last week, when he said: “Do not expect us to save the world … China can at most save itself,” according to Hong Kong’s The Standard.

Speaking at a conference, Lou added that “we do not have the courage to invest in them [Western financial institutions]… because we don’t know what problems we will bring upon ourselves.”

The sovereign fund has, in the meanwhile, been building up its alternative investments team. In the past week, it reportedly hired former China head of UBS Zhou Yuan as the head of alternative investments and former Starr International executive Collin Lau to head its investments in real estate funds.

China Investment Corp was established in September 2007 and manages $200 billion of China’s foreign exchange reserves, which currently stand at $2 trillion.