An interesting picture is emerging: China is a creditor to other countries in the world to the tune of more than 1,300 billion dollars. This is according to a report published by AidData: "With new data from more than 700 state-owned lenders and donors in China, we show that Beijing remains the largest source of international development finance in the world. It continues to surpass all other bilateral and multilateral sources of aid and credit to the developing world, including the US and the World Bank." Note that China, together with Hong Kong, is by a wide margin the world's largest lender. The top 8 largest debtor countries have not changed for many years (Ireland is to be overtaken by Italy early next year), but the amount of debt is growing: 1. US, 2. UK, 3. Japan, 4. Netherlands, 5. France, 6. Ireland, 7. Italy, 8. Germany. G8 total external debt ~ over $63 trillion.