BEIJING, Jan 12 (Reuters) - The rise in Chinese foreign exchange reserves last year was mainly the result of trade and direct investment inflows, a regulator said on Wednesday.
Chinese FX reserves jumped by a record $199 billion in the fourth quarter, and economists said that much of that increase could not be explained by trade or direct investment, implying that speculative inflows had picked up towards the end of the year.
Guan Tao, head of the international payments department at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, was speaking at a forum streamed over the Internet. (Reporting by Aileen Wang and Simon Rabinovitch; Editing by Ken Wills)