China's outstanding external debt amounted to 548.938 billion U.S. dollars at the end of 2010, the country's foreign exchange regulator said Thursday.

This amount does not include that of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), Macao SAR and Taiwan, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said.

Of the total outstanding external debt, the outstanding registered external debt was 337.738 billion U.S. dollars and the balance of trade credit was 211.2 billion U.S. dollars.

Outstanding long- and medium-term external debt accounted for 31.56 percent of the total, while outstanding short-term external debt accounted for 68.44 percent, according to a statement on the SAFE website.

In terms of the types of debt, the balance of international commercial loans totaled 270.108 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 79.98 percent of the outstanding registered external debt, with the proportion rising 5.56 percentage points compared with that at the end of 2009.

The balance of foreign government loans and loans granted by international financial organizations amounted to 67.63 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 20.02 percent of the outstanding registered external debt.

In terms of currency structure, the debt in U.S. dollars accounted for 70.41 percent of the outstanding registered external debt, representing an increase of 2.65 percentage points compared with that at the end of 2009.

The debt in Japanese yen accounted for 8.56 percent, down 3.33 percentage points. The debt in euro accounted for 4.41 percent, down 1.97 percentage points.