The Dragon Roars Convincingly

Having thoroughly mortgaged our future to the Chinese with our trade policies over the last thirty years, we best pay attention to their threats:

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US Treasury bonds if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, met with Chinese president Hu Jintao in Beijing last week.

Two Chinese officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning, for the first time, that Beijing may use its $1,330bn (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress. Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Described as China's "nuclear option" in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is breaking down through historic support levels.

It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession.

It is estimated that China holds more than $900bn in a mix of US bonds.

Xia Bin, finance chief at China's Development Research Centre (which has cabinet rank), kicked off what appears to be government policy, with a comment last week that Beijing's foreign reserves should be used as a "bargaining chip" in talks with the US.

"Of course, China doesn't want any undesirable phenomenon in the global financial order," he said.

He Fan, an official at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, went further yesterday, letting it be known that Beijing had the power to set off a dollar collapse, if it chose to do so.

"China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars. Such a big sum, of which a considerable portion is in US Treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency," he told China Daily. "Russia, Switzerland and several other countries have reduced their dollar holdings. China is unlikely to follow suit as long as the yuan's exchange rate is stable against the dollar.