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View Full Version : China Has Divested 97 Percent of Its Holdings in U.S. Treasury Bills



jonathan
06-03-2011, 03:14 PM
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/china-has-divested-97-percent-its-holdin


<via Drudge>
sailingaway
06-03-2011, 03:18 PM
Wow.
Cowlesy
06-03-2011, 03:24 PM
Please note they are only taking about "Treasury Bills," which are considered short-term paper. This doesn't include "Treasury Notes" (around 10 year maturities) and "Treasury Bonds" or "Long Bonds" which are 20-30 year securities.
squarepusher
06-03-2011, 03:37 PM
Please note they are only taking about "Treasury Bills," which are considered short-term paper. This doesn't include "Treasury Notes" (around 10 year maturities) and "Treasury Bonds" or "Long Bonds" which are 20-30 year securities.

informative post
sailingaway
06-03-2011, 03:41 PM
Please note they are only taking about "Treasury Bills," which are considered short-term paper. This doesn't include "Treasury Notes" (around 10 year maturities) and "Treasury Bonds" or "Long Bonds" which are 20-30 year securities.

thanks. You're right.
goRPaul
06-03-2011, 05:51 PM
Looks like it was mainly because of the bailout. Before the bailout, the highest they ever had at one time was $37 billion. I'll come up with a graph soon.
goRPaul
06-03-2011, 07:00 PM
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-zlzwGcaskeU/TemBvD0l1JI/AAAAAAAAAFg/OdZuCKDeC9I/chinesetbill.jpg

It was never that high to begin with, it only just got higher after the bailouts. However, in total debt, we owe China $1.15 trillion dollars, almost a thousand dollars for each person living in China.
Zippyjuan
06-04-2011, 11:08 AM
According to the US Treasury Department, total Chinese holdings of US debt (all types of Treasury notes) are currently $1.144 trillion. One year ago, that was $895 billion- an increase of 28% (March 2010 and March 2011 figures). The recent peak level of holdings was in September when they had $1.175 trillion. http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt In terms of total holdings, this is nothing significant.

Scanning down to the bottom of the Treasury page I linked to I see that Treasury Bills comprise $414 billion out of a total $4.479 trillion in foreign held US debt so T-bills are just a tiny fraction of total US foreign held debt (less than ten percent).