"Our return on overseas investments last year roughly matched that in 2009 and it was over 11 percent," said Jesse Wang, an executive vice president at CIC, which was set up in 2007 with a mandate to earn a higher return on a slice of China's foreign exchange reserves.

CIC posted an 11.7 percent return on its global investments in 2009, reversing losses in the previous year and bolstering its case for fresh government funding.

The fund's unaudited average investment return in the past three years was 6.345 percent, Wang said.

Wang reiterated his call for the government to inject more of its $2.85 trillion foreign exchange reserves into CIC to help the fund boost investment.

"We have such a huge pool of foreign exchange reserves, which could exceed $3 trillion by the end of the first quarter. A part of the reserves should be used for more effective investment," Wang said.

The bulk of the reserves are managed by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), which follows a much more conservative investment strategy.

Chinese media have said since late 2009 that CIC was seeking $100-200 billion in new funding, but there have been no subsequent reports of any progress on that.