There are several ways to increase foreign exchange reserves:

1. The central bank buys foreign exchange in the foreign exchange market to form foreign exchange reserves. In the second half of 20 14, the central bank completely abandoned its normal intervention in the exchange rate and basically did not buy foreign exchange through the foreign exchange market, so it basically did not increase foreign exchange reserves by buying foreign exchange. In addition, when the RMB exchange rate falls at the end of the year, it is not ruled out that the central bank will release some foreign exchange reserves to stabilize the RMB exchange rate into the market (it is a guess, and there is no public data to support it at present), which will lead to a decrease in foreign exchange reserves.

2. Investment income from purchasing foreign exchange reserves. This piece of data is hard to get, but the investment income of foreign exchange reserves is really small, and the growth of foreign exchange reserves may be minimal.

3. In the structure of foreign exchange reserves, changes in the exchange rate of non-US currencies against the US dollar will affect the amount of foreign exchange reserves converted into US dollars. In the fourth quarter, the US dollar index rose sharply, and the conversion of euro and yen assets in China's foreign exchange reserves into US dollars decreased, which had a great impact.

Based on the above analysis, the amount of foreign exchange reserves converted into US dollars at the end of 20 14 is likely to be reduced to some extent compared with the end of the third quarter.