Friday’s figures show a China that is selling. Fortune says it may only be moving. In August, on the US Treasury list, Beijing still held $591 billion in Treasuries. An 18-year low. A year earlier: $700 billion. In April 2022: $1 trillion. De-dollarisation, the headline. A shifted portfolio, the subhead. Neither is a receipt.

The data, the Treasury writes, come mainly from US custodians and brokers. Securities held in overseas accounts may not carry the owner’s name. Canada rose, in the same August, to $465 billion, from $169 billion five years earlier. Belgium, to $490.5 billion, from $228 billion. Add federally backed housing-agency bonds and the jump is larger still. The coincidence is suspicious. It is not a confession from the People’s Bank.

Brad Setser, at the Council on Foreign Relations, formerly at Treasury, wrote on X: the evidence that China uses a Canadian custodian for some of its Agencies is “especially strong”. Since about 2020, huge stocks have also risen in the United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg, Belgium. Added to Canada, he estimates, you can reach as high as $500 billion. A tighter adjustment, only Canada, Luxembourg and France since about 2022, gives around $300 billion. The American share of reserves, still after Setser, would remain between 50 and 55 percent. He speaks of several non-US custodians “to mask its true holdings”. That is a researcher’s estimate. It is not a SAFE register.

Bloomberg, carried by the Financial Post, puts the Street: Vitaliy Liberman, at DoubleLine, asked why Canada had amassed nearly $600 billion in Treasuries and agencies, in a tariff war. The answer, he says, was always the same: “It’s not Canada. It’s the other Canada.” Then the wire cuts: there is no direct evidence that Canadian banks work on China’s behalf. SAFE declined to comment. OSFI does not discuss clients. The US Treasury did not reply.

China’s surplus has to be recycled somewhere. $1.2 trillion in 2025, a record. $938 billion in the first nine months of 2026. Domestic demand is weak, property is in retreat, exports pull. The 2022 sanctions on Russia pushed central banks towards gold. Trump’s trade war gives a reason to sell. A trillion-dollar surplus gives a reason to buy otherwise. “Perhaps”, Fortune writes. That is the adverb. Keep it.

Until a register, it remains a coincidence of tables. After a register, the owners remain. Anyone who mixes them turns Canada into a province of the People’s Bank.

Image: Boubloub, the new headquarters of the People’s Bank of China, Beijing, 27 October 2025, CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph shows the bank, not a Canadian vault.

Sources consulted: China looks like it's dumping Treasury debt but may actually be stashing it in Canada and Belgium — Fortune; China’s backdoor bond-buying talk swirls on US$600 billion buildup — Bloomberg via Financial Post.