On December 11, 2016, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) announced that China had officially started to report to the BIS locational banking statistics (LBS) under the international banking statistics (IBS) and released China's data on its website, which shows that the quality of China's balance of payments statistics has been internationally recognized again, thanks to continuous improvement on transparency. Joining LBS is another key progress China has made to achieve the targets of the G20 Data Gaps Initiative (DGI) since implementing the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6) and participating in the IMF's Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS).

Expanding the IBS-reporting population has been one of the targets of the G20 Data Gaps Initiative (DGI). China's joining takes the number of LBS-reporting countries to 46. A total of 12 EMEs now report to the LBS, along with 12 offshore financial centers and 22 advanced economies.

At end-June 2016, banks in China reported outstanding cross-border claims of USD 778 billion and liabilities of USD 918 billion. This makes China the 10th largest cross-border creditor in the international banking market. Turning to the currency composition of the cross-border claims and liabilities, at end-June 2016 banks in China were net lenders of US dollars, with dollar claims of USD 549 billion and dollar liabilities of USD 274 billion, resulting in net claims of USD 275 billion. However, USD 358 billion of Chinese banks' cross-border liabilities were denominated in Renminbi, while Renminbi-denominated cross-border claims of banks in China stood at USD 73 billion, leading to USD 285 billion in net cross-border liabilities.

The BIS text is available on its official website at www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1612s.htm.