The National Audit Office (NAO) said on December 30, 2013 that governments at various levels in China had been liable for a total direct debt of 20.7 trillion yuan ($3.4 trillion) as of the end of June 2013.

The results came after a two-month-long nationwide audit of government debt by the NAO in August and September of 2013.

In summary, the audit results showed that direct debt owned by the Central Government stood at 9.81 trillion yuan ($1.62 trillion) at the end of June 2013, while the remaining 10.89 trillion yuan ($1.8 trillion) was owned by local governments.

The debt guaranteed by the Central Government was 260 billion yuan ($42.98 billion), while debt guaranteed by local governments totaled 2.67 trillion yuan ($441.4 billion), according to the NAO.

Over the past year or so, the market has experienced anxiety over the scale of local government debt, as there has been no official update on it since mid-2011, when the NAO put the nationwide figure at around 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.77 trillion) for the end of 2010.