China's official news agency Xinhua reported on October 7, 2017, that the total assets of the China Investment Corporation (CIC), China's sovereign wealth fund, had surpassed US$ 900 billion by August 2017. It is now the world's second-largest sovereign wealth fund, only after the Government Pension Fund of Norway, whose assets reached one trillion dollars last month.

Reuters said that the People's Bank of China (PBoC) reported on October 12, 2017, that China's Forex reserves rose US$17 billion last month to US$3.109 trillion, compared with an increase of US$10.5 billion in August. Economists polled by Reuters had expected reserves to rise by US$8 billion. It was the first time that China’s reserves have climbed for eight months in a row since June 2014, and brought its stockpile — the world’s largest — to the highest since October last year. The consistent rise has led some analysts to believe the People’s Bank of China might have become a net buyer of foreign exchange for the first time in nearly two years.

The head of the People's Bank of China (PBoC) Zhou Xiaochuan in an interview with the influential Chinese financial magazine Caijing said China must embrace free trade and investment, let the market decide the yuan’s value, and scrap capital account controls. He said the three elements were interlinked and could not be separated.

(Comment: 69 -year Zhou Xiaochuan, who was given an unusual extension in his job in November 2012, has designed and promoted a series of economic liberalisations over the last 15 years, including freeing up interest rates at home and earning the yuan a nominal international reserve currency status abroad.)