China’s $3 billion investment in Blackstone, while insignificant relative to China’s $1.3 trillion of reserve assets – a sum headed for $1.5 trillion by the end of this year and likely to hit $2 trillion sometime in 2009 – is but a toe dipped in the water, a test run. At the start of the process, China will have small and indirect ownership stakes in a great many US enterprises, and the odds are that the usual objections will be absent.
于是黑石集团应声而出。中国在黑石的30亿美元投资，尽管相对于中国1.3万亿美元的外汇资产储备不值一提—这一数额在今年底会直冲1.5万亿，并可能在2009年的某个时候达到2万亿—但这也只是小试锋芒。在这一进程之初，中国会获得大量美国企业的小部分间接所有权。而这样的操作很可能不会遭遇通常的反对。中国会获得一种分散风险的方式，降低使其外汇储备收益保持低水平的价格压力，同时避免陷入政治麻烦。而黑石会得到额外的现金和丰厚的佣金。