According to China Daily (26 June 2008):

Flush with dollars from a huge trade surplus, the Chinese sovereign wealth fund is beginning to test the waters in New York real estate, said Scott Latham, executive vice-president of capital markets group for real estate services company Cushman & Wakefield.

Back in the depths of the real estate depression in the early 1990s, private individuals from Hong Kong were big players in New York real estate. A group headed by Henry Cheng, for example, was able to buy a distressed loan and control of the property from Donald Trump for less than $100 million along the West Side and make a killing when it recently sold it for $1.8 billion.

As China is still internally grappling with moving such large amounts of money out of the country, will meet with massive objections from various faction. I am also of the opinion that China should focus its investments in Asia rather than diverting their attention further away in the United States. Yes there are great opportunities right now, given that many assets are all under-valued and are very attractive at this moment.

Why isn’t China interested in the rest of Asia? We have to understand that we are probably not as attractive as the US right now. China might also have something to prove their present new-found economic clout in the global arena, allows them to ‘take-over’ and ‘help’ United States out of its possibly stagflation situation. Despite all this possibilities, I’m of the opinion that we should do our best to try to attract this fund for further development in Asia – be it in Singapore, India, Thailand, Malaysia or Vietnam. There is still opportunities abound, and we hope to still do our best to attract them to invest. We can just hope that the authorities are doing the utmost to convince major investors to channel their funds for further development in the rest of Asia.