A Chinese report saying Beijing should increase its holdings of euros and yen in its foreign reserves knocked the already battered dollar on Monday while global stocks sought to recover from last week's weakness.

Euro zone government bonds hit a one-month low.

The dollar fell to a 14-month low against the euro and the yen got a boost from an opinion piece in the Financial News, a paper published by the People's Bank of China.

It said the dollar should remain the principal currency in China's foreign exchange reserves but that the share of euros and yen should increase.

The issue of countries diversifying their reserves or even ditching the dollar has been one of the factors weakening the U.S. currency this year.

This was underlined by the general weakness that continued even after the author of the report said he was expressing a personal opinion.

The dollar has lost more than 7 percent against a basket of major currencies so far this year <.DXY>.

The comments from China are pretty strong and that is supporting the euro, said Tony Bieber, forex analyst at Suncorp.

The euro rose as high as $1.5064 on trading platform EBS, its highest since August 2008, pushing up from below $1.50 in early trade. It was later up 0.2 percent at $1.5030.

The dollar was down 0.2 percent at 91.80 yen.

STOCKS FIRMER

World equities as measured by MSCI <.MIWD00000PUS> edged upwards as did the main emerging market index <.MSCIEF> after some weakness last week.

There were some signs last week that investors may be becoming more jittery about taking on risk than they have been lately, or at least keener to book profits.

Emerging market stocks, for example, fell for four days in a row.

On Monday, European shares were higher in early trade. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> index of top shares was up 0.1 percent.

Earlier, Japan's Nikkei average <.N225> hit its highest close in four weeks.

Euro zone government bonds edged lower, tracking U.S. Treasuries down as that market braced for a record wave of issuance this week.

December Bund futures were near one-months and 10-year bond yields were at one-month highs around 3.371 percent.

The U.S. government will offer a record $123 billion in longer-dated debt this week, beating the previous record of $115 billion set in July.

European union China