China Investment Corporate Ltd. (CIC), the government investment fund, is keeping contacts with foreign fund managers to gain profitable returns in overseas investment.

"We are currently contacting about 100 foreign fund managers for the highly-dispersed and little-related allocation of assets in an effort to achieve long-term investment returns," CIC deputy general manager Wang Jianxi said Sunday.

Wang, a member of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), is in Beijing to attend the annual session of the country's top advisory body.

Wang believed that long-term investment could ease the risks of stock market fluctuations and tap the potentials of the most valuable investment means.

The CIC was set up in September 2007 to increase the value of China's huge foreign exchange reserve, which stood at 1.53trillion U.S. dollars at the end of last year.

Last December, the CIC agreed to take a 5-billion-U.S.-dollar stake in the U.S.-based Morgan Stanley. It also invested 3 billion U.S. dollars in the U.S. private equity firm Blackstone Group and put 100 million U.S. dollars into the initial public offering of the China Railway Group in Hong Kong.

Wang admitted that the CIC now faced much pressure in the wake of U.S. subprime mortgage crisis as the world capital market fluctuated. Meanwhile, the company had to cope with the debt cost of the 200-billion-U.S.-dollar initial capital of the CIC coming from the 15.5-trillion-yuan special treasury bond issued by the Ministry of Finance.

"The risk tolerance for the CIC is rather low, which brings higher requirement for the company operation," he said. "We should make more profits while limiting investment risks."

Wang noted that company management, risk management and talented people recruitment and management are the top issues for the CIC to profit.

"We will maintain transparency of company operations on the premise of safeguarding our commercial interests and deal with forex investment business independently by persisting in the principle of separating government functions from company management," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2008)