China's Treasury Holdings Fell to $590.7 Billion. Canada and Belgium Gained $60 Billion, Which Covers Only Part of It
Reported holdings are down $109 billion in a year, but Japan's fell by more, and Treasury says its data track custodians, not owners.
By Priya Kanth, Business & Economy
· 3 min read · Updated
Key Takeaways
- •China's reported Treasury holdings fell to $590.7 billion in August 2026 from $699.7 billion a year earlier, a drop of $109.0 billion or 15.6 percent, according to Treasury data.
- •Canada and Belgium together added $60.0 billion in reported holdings over the same year, enough to cover 55 percent of China's decline if every dollar were Chinese.
- •Treasury warns its figures track custodians and may not show the actual owner, and Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations told Fortune that China likely uses several non-U.S. custodians.
- •Japan's reported holdings fell $115.6 billion over the year, more than China's drop, while total foreign holdings rose $82.6 billion to $9,331.7 billion.
China held $590.7 billion of U.S. Treasury securities in August, according to the Treasury Department's monthly foreign-holdings table, down from $699.7 billion a year earlier. That is a fall of $109.0 billion, or 15.6 percent. Fortune reported on October 18 that the figure is the lowest in 18 years, a claim this piece did not independently check against the full historical series.
The short answer
China's reported Treasury holdings fell $109 billion in a year, to $590.7 billion. Canada and Belgium, two countries where foreign investors keep securities in custody, gained a combined $60 billion over the same period. Treasury says its data track custodians, not owners, so the drop may overstate how much China sold. Total foreign holdings still rose to $9.33 trillion.
$590.7 billion
China's reported Treasury holdings, August 2026
Down from $699.7 billion in August 2025 and $618.0 billion in July. Source: Treasury TIC Table 5.
What the custody numbers allow
The Treasury table comes with a warning printed under the data. Because the figures are collected mainly from U.S.-based custodians and broker-dealers, Treasury says they "may not provide a precise accounting of individual country ownership." A Chinese holding parked at a custodian in another country shows up under that other country.
Fortune's account leans on that gap. Over the same twelve months, Canada's reported holdings rose $20.6 billion to $464.6 billion, and Belgium's rose $39.4 billion to $490.5 billion. Together that is $60.0 billion, or 55 percent of China's decline. Brad Setser, a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow and former Treasury official, told Fortune that China likely uses several non-U.S. custodians, and that the evidence for Canadian custodians is especially strong. Fortune also reported that some China watchers doubt a wholesale sell-off, pointing to jumps in holdings elsewhere that coincide with China's fall. It did not name them.
The adjustment is not new. In a June 2016 analysis for the Council on Foreign Relations, Setser added an estimate for Belgian custodians to the reported figure and arrived at $1.3 trillion to $1.4 trillion for China, against about $1.245 trillion in the Treasury data. He called that kind of adjustment standard practice among analysts and described his own as conservative.
Where the arithmetic stops working
The custody story explains some of the drop, and the table shows why it cannot be treated as the whole answer. Canada's August figure of $464.6 billion is lower than its readings for September 2025 ($476.1 billion), November ($472.4 billion) and December ($468.3 billion). The year-over-year gain exists mostly because August 2025 was a soft month for Canada at $444.0 billion. Canada's reported holdings also moved $72.5 billion in a single month, from $468.3 billion in December to $395.8 billion in January.
China is also not the largest seller in the table. Japan's holdings fell $115.6 billion, or 9.8 percent, to $1,068.3 billion. The United Kingdom's rose $108.2 billion to $1,009.5 billion. Nothing in the data attributes either move to a hidden Chinese account, and nobody quoted in the sources claims it does.
Monthly noise matters here too. China's holdings fell $27.3 billion between July and August, a 4.4 percent drop. The March decline was larger, at $40.9 billion, from $694.2 billion to $653.3 billion.
Foreign demand in total
Foreign holdings of Treasuries in aggregate rose $82.6 billion over the year, or 0.9 percent, to $9,331.7 billion. China's share of that total slipped from 7.6 percent to 6.3 percent. Foreign official holdings, which cover central banks and similar institutions, fell $164.2 billion to $3,755.6 billion, and their Treasury bill holdings dropped from $411.6 billion to $312.2 billion.
The spreadsheet shows a seller. It does not show a buyer. That distinction matters because Treasury yields set the base for mortgage and business loan rates, and a lasting retreat by a top holder would be a different problem from a shift in where the securities are stored. The August figures do not show a retreat in total, though one month cannot settle it. Treasury's next release, covering September, will say whether China's line keeps falling while Canada's and Belgium's rise.
- U.S. Treasuries
- China
- TIC data
- Brad Setser
- Canada
- Belgium
Sources
- 01Table 5: Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities, August 2026, U.S. Department of the Treasuryticdata.treasury.gov
- 02Fortune report on China Treasury holdings and non-U.S. custodians, October 18, 2026, Fortunefortune.com
- 03How Many Treasuries Does China Still Own?, Council on Foreign Relationscfr.org
Corrections
No corrections have been made to this article.
About the reporter
Business & Economy Reporter, Trestlewire
Before I was a journalist, I spent five years as an equity research analyst, building spreadsheet models that nobody outside a trading floor would ever see. I learned two things in those years: that a compelling story and an accurate one are not always the same thing, and that almost every business narrative worth writing about is sitting inside a spreadsheet somewhere, waiting for someone to open the file.
Read full bio and all stories →