The People's Republic of China has emerged for the first time as a significant provider of Irish government debt, with the world's most populous country taking up almost 6% of Ireland's recent €7bn bond issue, the largest subscription apart from traditional European subscribers such as the UK, Germany and France. Chinese subscribers outnumbered Irish institutions for the finance, which runs until 2019.


As one of Asia's most powerful and fastest-growing economies, China has been flexing its financial muscles around the world by funding the budget deficits of several developed economies. It is also a huge holder of US treasury bonds and recently acquired a stake of almost 10% in Blackstone, one of the world's biggest private equity funds.


In April €7bn was raised in a bond issue by the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), with the funds to be used for government expenditure and to replace existing debt.


At the time the allocation to Chinese subscribers, likely to be pension funds and banks, was not revealed. However figures released to the Sunday Tribune show that Chinese subscribers took up 5.93% of the bond issue. Only institutions from the UK, France, Germany and Netherlands took up a greater share. In a significant milestone, Chinese subscribers to the 2019 bond were larger than those from Ireland.


The rapid growth of China as a provider of government debt is evidenced by the fact that the last Irish bond issue, just last October, involved no Chinese subscribers. The figures were compiled by the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA).


The bond issue, which was oversubscribed, is paying an interest rate or coupon of 4.4%, which is attractive in European terms. Chinese institutions took up €415m, although as the Irish government issues more bonds, this figure is likely to grow.


Economists describe this as a major economic sea change with huge flows of capital coming to the west from the east.


In April the NTMA said there was a great response to the transaction, which it said highlighted the importance of the strong credit quality "associated with Ireland in the euro government bond market".


Despite the rising influence of China in the government bond market, the UK still remains the key lender of finance to the Irish exchequer, taking up 30% of the 2019 bond issue.