China External Debt

About this data

China's comprehensive external debt (全口径外债) on a quarterly basis, from the end of the fourth quarter of 2014 onwards, is compiled in accordance with the IMF's external debt statistics standards. This represents the liabilities side of the International Investment Position: it accounts solely for debt liabilities, excluding equity. The table breaks down the data along three axes simultaneously — borrowing sector (government, central bank, commercial banks, other sectors, and intercompany lending under direct investment), contract maturity (short-term under one year, and long-term), and debt instrument (deposits, debt securities, bank loans, and trade credit. The SHORT-TERM debt share is the most closely monitored risk indicator: China's short-term debt accounts for more than half of the total outstanding debt, largely concentrated in commercial banks in the form of deposits and trade credit, thereby exhibiting high volatility in response to exchange rate expectations. The series begins in late 2014 because in 2015 China transitioned to the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS); figures under the prior standard are incomparable and are not spliced into this series. The annual series running backward to 1985 is located in the External Debt and Debt Sustainability table. End-of-quarter figures are published approximately three months after the reference period, and the source's time-series file generally lags the quarterly bulletin by one cycle. Verification check: the sum of the five sectors equals the total row, short-term plus long-term equals each sector, and the end-of-fourth-quarter outstanding debt matches the annual table perfectly across all 12 overlapping years. Source: State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) of China.