A few days ago, China's customs announced the trade data for the first four months of our country, with the surplus exceeding 2,000 billion yuan.

Next, we also saw the foreign exchange reserves data, which returned to the position of 3.2 trillion US dollars.

But this still makes people very puzzled, is it because of the damage caused by the strong harvesting of the United States, why do we have a huge trade surplus every year, but the foreign exchange reserves data has not increased for many years?

Some people also want to know, our continuous selling of US debt, leading to a continuous decrease in the proportion of US debt in foreign exchange reserves, is this the reason why foreign exchange reserves have been difficult to increase?

01, where did the surplus go?

Let's first look at the situation last year, last year the whole year, our country's foreign trade surplus reached 5.9 trillion yuan.

Next, let's look at the first four months of this year, the foreign trade surplus also reached 2.02 trillion yuan.

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That is to say, from the beginning of last year to the end of April this year, our cumulative foreign trade surplus is nearly 80,000 billion yuan, which is equivalent to 1,160 billion US dollars according to the average exchange rate.

But let's look at the data of foreign exchange reserves again. The latest foreign exchange reserves data has just broken through 3.2 trillion US dollars, which is the highest point in the past half year. Before that, it almost broke through 30,000 billion US dollars.

However, even so, compared with 2014, it was close to 4 trillion US dollars at that time, but now it is much less than that time, but we have been a foreign trade surplus for these years, and the money earned has disappeared.Is it really being harvested by the United States?

02, Overseas Investment?

Many people speculate that the reason for the lack of increase in foreign exchange reserves might be due to people investing money abroad. This could include going abroad for tourism or studying, but more likely it is investment in foreign countries.

Due to our country's foreign exchange management regulations, only qualified funds can invest in foreign countries, and ordinary people cannot invest abroad. Therefore, it is said that some funds may be flowing out through some improper channels.

A significant number of people take funds to invest abroad, mainly because they believe that the US dollar is the global currency, and owning US dollars is the safe protection for their funds.

But in reality, in the past two or three years, this part of the funds may have suffered a lot of losses. Regardless of whether it is buying US stocks or bonds, the returns are negative. If they bought real estate in the United States, it would be even worse, and now they may not be able to sell it.

03, Keeping Foreign Exchange with the People

However, the above is not the main reason, the more important reason is keeping foreign exchange with the people.

First, in the international balance of payments table of the past three years, it can be found that many remittances have not been exchanged for RMB, so this money has not been reflected in the foreign exchange reserves.

The main reason for not exchanging money in time is to find the right opportunity, such as last year when the RMB appreciated, some enterprises quickly exchanged money and earned some profits from it.Of course, there are also some funds that enterprises keep as reserve funds for foreign import investments.

Secondly, it is mainly because some ordinary people use foreign exchange to purchase some foreign financial products, such as overseas insurance and funds. As a result, this part of the foreign exchange funds has been transformed into the assets of ordinary people and has not been included in the central bank's foreign exchange reserves.

The data from the central bank shows that the growth rate of our country's foreign exchange deposits is very fast. In fact, this is the foreign exchange funds obtained by ordinary people after being deposited in banks, becoming the assets of ordinary people, which is the concept of "hiding foreign exchange among the people."

Therefore, the main reason why our country's foreign exchange data has not increased is that the money earned from trade surplus has become the assets of enterprises and ordinary people.

04, Loss due to selling US debt?

Some people say that the lack of growth in our country's foreign exchange data may be due to the loss caused by selling US debt.

A long time ago, the value of US debt owned by our country was close to 1.4 trillion US dollars, and now the value of US debt has decreased to 850 billion US dollars. The US debt we own is indeed decreasing, but is it a loss?

In fact, it is not, on the contrary, under the current situation in the United States, we can only avoid losses by continuously reducing our holdings of US debt.

Moreover, in the past year, the price of US debt has been continuously falling. If we hold more US debt, the loss of interest will be greater.

Another potential loss is when US debt defaults, which would be even more not worth the loss.So, selling off is justified, and should continue.