Quote Originally Posted by Agent Miles
because they know that this is a wise investment.
The problem is, the debts caused by the Iraq war, and the threat of an Iran war which would cause even greater debts in the future, means that it may not be entirely wrong to reason that it is no longer as wise an investment as it once was.

It will be interesting to see whether China is doing this out of self-preservation to avoid losing much on a possibly falling dollar, or in order to pressure the US government to agree to something. The latter case is probably more dangerous, as an economical crash caused by the former is likely to repair itself within a decade or two as in all historical examples of crashes (purely speculation-caused economical crashes can be repaired fast because all production machinery and educated workers remain). A political crisis with global tensions between superpowers, however, could remain much longer and with more severe consequences.