World Clock / Jamaica / vs China

🇯🇲 Jamaica vs 🇨🇳 China

Live side-by-side comparison of government debt. China currently owes about 1412.4× as much as Jamaica — a gap of $21.87 trillion. Updated every second from each country's baseline figure; sources below.

🇯🇲
Jamaica
$15,493,536,545
Debt-to-GDP65%
Per citizen$5,622
Per second+$28
VS
🇨🇳
China
$21,882,361,108,923
Debt-to-GDP99%
Per citizen$15,611
Per second+$99,328
In nominal terms, China carries the larger government debt — roughly 1412.4× that of Jamaica, a difference of $21.87 trillion. Debt-to-GDP (Jamaica: 65%, China: 99%) says more about the burden than the raw total does.

Among the 135 governments tracked here, Jamaica ranks 50th by debt-to-GDP and China 20th. Measured per person, Jamaica is 71st and China 41st.

Analysis

By total government debt, Jamaica ranks 109th and China 2nd among the 135 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 2.8× that in Jamaica ($15,611 vs $5,622 per person).

The debt-to-GDP picture is asymmetric here: China sits at 99% of GDP, well above Jamaica's 65%, 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 gap between them is widening: China's debt is growing faster in dollar terms ($99K/sec vs $28/sec for Jamaica), adding roughly $8,579,520,000 to the difference each day.

Scale is part of the story too: China's population (1.40B) is about 508.6× Jamaica's (3M), 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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Source: Global Debt Clock, based on the IMF World Economic Outlook (October 2026, general government gross debt).
Live data: /api/compare?a=jm&b=cn · Jamaica page · China page
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