Chinese lash out at government's Blackstone (BX) buy

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mo0over

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Posted: Aug 08, 2007 - 06:00 PM
Post subject: Chinese lash out at government's Blackstone (BX) buy

Chinese lash out at government's Blackstone buy
BLOGGERS SAY BEIJING WAS FOOLED
By Keith Bradsher
New York Times
San Jose Mercury News
Article Launched:08/05/2007 01:36:22 AM PDT

HONG KONG - The first purchase by the Chinese government's new overseas investment fund, a $3 billion stake in the Blackstone Group, has produced an unusual public backlash within China.

Since Blackstone went public on June 22, the company's shares have fallen steeply, pushing down the value of the Chinese government's investment by more than $425 million in just six weeks.

Chinese bloggers, and even some financial media here, have not taken the hammering lying down. They are assiduously tracking the dwindling value of the government stake, and some bloggers and postings in Internet chat rooms are bitterly questioning Beijing's stock judgment - often in particularly Chinese terms.

"O senior officials of the Chinese government, please do not be fooled by sweet-talking wolves dressed in human skin," said one of seven scathing Internet postings compiled by an anonymous blogger on Sina.com, a Chinese Web site. "The foreign reserves are the product of the sweat and blood of the people of China, please invest them with more care!"

In a sign that the Chinese government may be less comfortable with the marketplace of ideas than they are with the stock market, the blogger's entry was visible on the Web site on Thursday afternoon but had disappeared by Thursday night. Access to other entries by the same blogger was blocked, but milder criticisms of the Blackstone investment by others could still be found.

"It is really alarming the speed with which the Chinese government entered into this investment," read one, signed "anonymous person 586215," which remained on Sina.com Thursday night.

Foreign investments are particularly tricky for the Chinese government because of the public's virulent nationalism, born of centuries of foreign invasions and occupations like the British capture of Hong Kong in 1841 and the Japanese conquest of Manchuria in 1931.

The same online writer who warned of wolves in human skin, for instance, also cautioned, "These fierce wolves are similar to the foreign thieves who pillaged our forefathers, only they are all the more cunning and manipulative, but their goal of pillaging China does not change with the centuries."

And foreign investments could become more of an issue now. For decades, China's central bank followed the example of most central banks by investing the bulk of its assets in Treasurys and other government bonds. But as China's foreign reserves have quintupled in five years, to $1.33 trillion, the government has started chasing higher returns. It is learning the hard way that greater returns mean greater risk, and sometimes losses.

Over the last several years, the People's Bank of China has led the way among central banks in buying American mortgage-backed securities, accumulating an estimated $100 billion worth, according to people familiar with the central bank's trading. The People's Bank of China has reportedly chosen some of the most credit-worthy tranches of these securities.

But with the current malaise in the U.S. housing market, even the value of some mortgage investments that once seemed conservative is starting to erode.