MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES (in billions of dollars)
2004 2004 2004 2004
COUNTRY May April Mar Feb
Japan 668.1 652.5 646.4 614.6 Mainland China 164.1 161.0 157.3 153.8
United Kingdom 113.2 127.3 118.0 101.5
Caribbean Banking Center 3/ 72.2 56.6 66.3 59.8
Korea 58.7 59.2 60.4 57.0
Taiwan 57.3 56.8 54.8 55.7
Hong Kong 52.7 52.1 50.7 53.1
Germany 49.7 50.0 45.7 45.9
Switzerland 49.3 51.1 48.6 48.2
OPEC 48.4 47.5 45.7 43.7
Mexico 41.7 35.8 34.0 33.6
Canada 33.0 33.3 30.7 28.3
Singapore 26.4 27.2 26.7 25.7
Luxembourg 25.6 26.2 27.8 27.7
Ireland 19.2 14.9 14.8 15.8
Israel 18.0 15.5 16.4 14.1
Italy 16.1 15.7 15.0 14.9
India 15.9 15.9 13.6 13.3
Turkey 15.7 16.3 14.9 14.2
Belgium 13.7 13.3 12.8 12.9
Netherlands 13.6 15.5 12.5 12.6
Brazil 12.9 12.4 13.1 11.3
Sweden 11.5 9.9 10.5 10.6
France 11.0 12.3 16.5 12.3
Thailand 10.9 10.8 11.9 15.3
Spain 10.4 11.5 9.3 9.6
Australia 7.3 7.5 10.0 12.6
All Other 118.1 120.7 118.3 114.2
Grand Totals 1754.7 1728.8 1702.7 1632.3
It's not perfect, since countries like Japan also will accumulate dollars and the Treasury doesn't necessarily know where these are; it's also not perfect since the "Caribbean money center" line is also an euphemism for "we don't know". For instance, Japan is actually carrying over $800 billion in foreign exchange assets. (For Japanese information, you want to go to the Ministry of Finance (the MOF, rhymes with doff) at and look for the Monthly Finance Review. It gives the actual foreign exchange holdings for Japan, along with lots of useful numbers all in one package.) But the Treasury page is good enough for government work, since it does tell us (1) who we are paying interest to (2) how much growth in that debt broken by country by month, and it gives a quick grand total. (Countries are not as likely to hold bonds if they are just in for the short term, particularly long bonds, because of nasty combinations of principal risk and exchange rate risk can quickly erode values. You can hedge against this, but that isn't free. Holding to maturity of course eliminates risks to principal due to interest rate rises. Japan manipulates the yen/dollar rate and that eliminates a certain amount of exchange rate risk for themselves. You can find on the MOF web page a summary of their recent currency interventions; the most current one is here. It was 0 yen, not a number that we particularly want to see since we need someone to buy our debt, and if it isn't Japan or China, who need to keep their currencies weak, then it could push interest rates since the auction might be bought by someone who demands higher rates.)
As to the point about the national debt still is more than 50% domestically held, that is correct (it is 70% domestically held currently, and 30% foreign; that is, the above 1.754 trillion dollars divided into the $6 trillion debt ), but the domestic percentage is dropping, and it won't be over 50% soon. The important curve is external debt-to-GDP:
Hope this is of some use.