It’s a stupid question.

1. China already owns a huge chunk of our national debt. It has accumulated $1.5 trillion in its foreign exchange reserves. At one point last year, it was adding $1 million a minute to its vaults. The U.S. already depends on China using that money to buy our bonds. It keeps our interest rates down. This by itself is more than enough power over our economy.

2. So far, the China Investment Corporation (CIC) – the name of its sovereign fund – has made investments totaling $200 billion. That’s a pretty big number. But only $60 billion of it is earmarked for foreign investment. And the U.S. will only get a small part of that. In other words, the numbers aren’t scary.

3. It’s invested $5 billion in Morgan Stanley. Oops. And $3 billion in Blackstone. Double oops. Maybe it’s not Americans that should be asking whether the Chinese should be investing billions into our companies, but the Chinese who should be asking whether they should be investing so much into assets falling in price.

Besides Chinese money, there are petrodollars, drug money, money from terrorist states and other suspect sources making their way into the global and U.S. economy. This is nothing new.

In a worst case scenario, can Chinese money exit all at once from U.S. companies – creating economic chaos? Can these small shares in very big companies lead U.S. companies into nefarious anti-U.S. activities?

No and no.

It reminds me of the paranoia surrounding Japan in the early 1980’s when they were buying some of our most cherished real estate. It’s true that Japan was (and is) an ally and China is a country where in some areas we cooperate and in some we compete. And in other areas we manage to cooperate and compete with them at the same time. In other words, it’s complicated.

U.S. companies have invested a great deal of money and technology into China. By the way, wouldn’t it be easier for the Chinese government to sabotage those investments on their own turf rather than pulling off something in the U.S.? And now, China is returning the favor – more with its money than technology.

I’m all for it. Anything that gives China more of a stake in our economy and our biggest companies doing well is fine by me.

What’s worrying me isn’t what they do with the $60 billion. It’s how they grew their foreign exchange reserve so fast. Our appetite for imports has made China a ton of money and has saddled the U.S with a huge debt.

A South Korean pension fund – the fifth largest in the world – just said it will stop buying Treasuries. Not being able to finance our huge debt is going to get us in the end, not China’s U.S. investments.