🇨🇳 China vs 🇸🇸 South Sudan

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. China currently owes about 6338.1× as much as South Sudan — a gap of $22.03 trillion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

Net debt and interest: IMF World Economic Outlook, October 2026, general government, 2025, mostly IMF estimates. A dash means no comparable figure. How these are calculated.

Among the 194 governments tracked here, China ranks 26th by debt-to-GDP and South Sudan 70th. Measured per person, China is 44th and South Sudan 186th.

Analysis

By total government debt, China ranks 2nd and South Sudan 156th among the 194 sovereigns tracked on this site.

On a per-citizen basis the picture can look different from the nominal totals: a resident's notional share of the government debt in China is roughly 56.2× that in South Sudan ($15,717 vs $280 per person).

The debt-to-GDP picture is asymmetric here: China sits at 99% of GDP, well above South Sudan's 64%, meaning China owes far more relative to the size of its own economy — even where the nominal, dollar-for-dollar comparison above suggests otherwise.

The IMF puts South Sudan at 64% of GDP net of financial assets, and publishes no net debt figure for China. China spends about 3.8% of government revenue on net interest ($188.9 billion in 2025), and South Sudan about 6.5% ($77 million in 2025). South Sudan carries the lower debt ratio but the heavier interest bill: rates, currency and assets matter as well as the size of the debt. China's figures are on the IMF's narrow measure, which leaves out local government financing vehicles. See the full interest ranking.

The gap between them is widening: China's debt is growing faster in dollar terms ($99K/sec vs −$3/sec for South Sudan), adding roughly $8,582,198,400 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: China's population (1.40B) is about 112.7× South Sudan's (12M), which is part of why the nominal and per-capita comparisons above can point in different directions — a government's debt load scales loosely with the size of both its economy and its population, not either alone.

This analysis is generated automatically from live data as an educational orientation, not financial advice — see the methodology page for definitions and caveats.

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