China trimmed its holdings of US debt by 34.2 billion dollars in December, leaving Japan the largest holder of US Treasury securities. The US Treasury Department says while China cut its holdings of the long-term securities, Japan and Britain increased their stakes.

Japan boosted its holdings by 11.5 billion dollars to just under 770 billion dollars in December. This outpaced China's December total of just over 755 billion dollars. Next on the list, Britain increased its holdings to just over 300 billion dollars from 277.6 billion dollars in November.

But total foreign holdings of US Treasury securities fell 53 billion dollars in December, surpassing the previous record drop of 44.5 billion dollars last April.