Long-term debt drove most of the decade’s decline in mainland China’s reported U.S. portfolio, a shift DBS says could weigh on Treasury demand and, over the long term, the dollar.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s annual survey put long-term debt holdings in the “China, Mainland” category at $859 billion on June 30, 2025, compared with $1.510 trillion on June 30, 2015. The category excludes Hong Kong and Macau.
Across all securities, Treasury reported a market value of $1.279 trillion for the category in June 2025, versus $1.844 trillion in June 2015. The difference, calculated from Treasury’s figures, is $565.4 billion, or about 30.7%.
Other holdings changed in the opposite direction: reported U.S. equities rose to $344.5 billion from $330.5 billion, and short-term debt increased to $75.1 billion from $3.3 billion. These amounts are market values on the survey dates. They do not show how much investors bought or sold between those dates.
DBS Group Research economist and FX & Credit Strategist Chang Wei Liang described the change as state-led in a Nov. 11 note. DBS said the portfolio shift could weigh on demand for U.S. Treasuries and, over the long term, the dollar. Its analysis did not point to a similar pattern among other countries. Treasury’s country-level figures do not identify which investors held the securities, so the state-led characterization is DBS’s assessment.
Treasury’s guidance on its Treasury International Capital system says country attribution can be incomplete when securities are held through custodians in third countries. The department also notes that some dollar assets are outside the data, making the survey an incomplete account of overseas holdings.
DBS places the portfolio shift amid U.S.-China trade and technology frictions and sanctions-related uncertainty. Its analysis traces the dollar’s global role to the post-World War II Bretton Woods system; those explanations are DBS’s framing, not findings from the Treasury holdings data.
Treasury expects preliminary results from its next survey, covering holdings as of June 30, 2026, by Feb. 26, 2027.
