China Unlikely to Give World Red Envelopes

A traditional red envelope with money inside is given during Chinese New Year. (Studio Paggy/Getty Images)

Despite calls by some for China to share its yuan with world nations hit hard by the economic crisis, it's likely China won't be especially altruistic in this regard.

Lou Jiwei, chairman of the China Investment Corporation was quoted by the New York Times last week that investing in U.S. financial institutions was just too risky.

"China can only save herself because the scale of China is still rather small," Lou said at the Clinton Global Initiative conference in Hong Kong. He added that the Chinese economy isn't big enough to have a large effect on the global economy.

"If China can do a good job domestically, that is the best thing it can do for the world," he said.

Just a few days later, during outgoing U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's last economic dialogue with Chinese officials in Beijing, a Chinese official offered this explanation for the cause of the U.S. financial crisis and offered some advice:

"The important reasons for the U.S. financial crisis include excessive consumption and high leverage," said Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China's central bank. "The United States should speed up domestic adjustment, raise its savings rate and reduce its trade and fiscal deficits."

While Paulson's meeting netted some economic cooperation between the United States in China, including an agreement to make it easier for foreign banks to trade bonds in China and a pledge by both countries to spend $20 billion to help trade in developing countries, it paved little way for resolving the economic tensions between the two countries.