The latest data on China's foreign reserves are likely to keep international fund managers focused on the business opportunities among the overseas investments of China's sovereign wealth funds.

The data showed that the country's foreign reserves increased by $141bn (￡85bn, €95bn) in the third quarter to a staggering $2,273bn – over twice the level of three years ago. Since the financial crisis of the late 1990s, Asian authorities have been keen to accumulate foreign reserves as a safeguard against the effects of extreme capital flows, and China has been in the vanguard.

There has been much attention on how these reserves are invested and how changes in the reserves impact international exchange rates. This has become particularly pertinent at a time when there is wide speculation that the dollar's position as the global reserve currency could be threatened if some of the large pools of reserves re-base their portfolios away from dollar denominated assets.