External debt grows to $883.9 billion

China's outstanding foreign debt reached 5.44 trillion yuan ($883.9 billion) by the end of March this year, the country's foreign exchange regulator said Thursday.

The figure is about 3.3 percent, or 175.1 billion yuan, more than that at the end of last year.

Most of the external debt was in the form of short-term borrowing, which came in at 4.25 trillion yuan, while long- and medium-term foreign debt stood at just 1.19 trillion yuan, according to the data released by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) on its official website.

In terms of currency structure, debt in US dollars accounted for 81.32 percent of the outstanding external debt, and euro-denominated foreign debt and debt in Japanese yen accounted for 5.26 percent and 4.46 percent, respectively, according to the SAFE.