Market to dictate US holdings

China's decisions on its holdings of United States Treasury bonds should be based on its accurate market judgments, not on opinion-swaying proposals by some nationalistic academics.

China slashed its holdings of US bonds to $755.4 billion in December from $789.6 billion the previous month, the lowest level since last February, according to recent US Department of Treasury data.

The latest $34.2 billion reduction, or 4.3 percent, was the fifth time that China cut down its US national debt last year. It brought down the proportion of the US bond holdings in China's foreign reserves from 37 percent at the end of 2008 to 33 percent in late last November.