Article by Thomas Ajava
Any discussion of the national debt these days seems to center on the fact China owns a lot of it. The truth of the matter is many countries own parts of our debt. Who and how much might surprise you.
China is, in fact, the biggest owner of the debt of the United States. The number is in the 0 billion range these days as the country has been switching out long term US debt for shorter term securities. This is often held up as a reason to be concerned, to wit, China might dump all the securities on the market and crush our economy. This seems very unlikely given that we are by far the biggest purchasers of Chinese products and any such action would create a lot of blow back to the Chinese economy as well.
As big a threat as people perceive China to be, it is interesting to note another Asian country holds nearly as much debt. Japan has roughly 3 billion in United States debt and has held it for a very long time. Despite this, nobody seems to fear a Japanese takeover of the United States, although they did roughly 20 years ago.
How about a few surprises? Canada owns about 0 billion of the debt. Brazil owns upwards of 0 billion. Hong Kong interests hold nearly 0 billion. Russia holds over 0 billion, a rather shocking finding considering the long history of the cold war.
It has been well documented that we live in a state of fear. The world is a complicated place, but our media and politicians like to simplify threats we face down to a sound bite. In this case, it is the threat of Chinese ownership of US debt. In truth, this is not the threat it seems at this point in time. Yes, China owns a good bit of our debt, but what country in its right mind would sabotage its best customer base? None that I can think of and I can
