Also, a point of interest is that a quarter of US debt is held by the US treasury itself, which covers things like the Social Security trust fund, Medicare trust fund, etc. This is because it sometimes receives excesses in what is owed in outgoing cash payments, thus we're increasing solvency of these programs by getting some interest on excesses.
Of the remaining ~20 trillion half is owned by the Federal Reserve. This is a result of debt monetization in the form of QE/buying it's own bonds (expansion of their balance sheet to increase liquidity). The rest then being owned by foreign governments and private entities. And of those, Japan is the largest owner, not China.
This is why it's important to remember that sovereignly held government debt is not applicable to individual debt. If you're looking to default on debt payments the primary impact will be felt by Americans as we are the main beneficiaries of bought/sold US debt. That is not to say that debt is meaningless as there are consequences to running up numbers too high. Interest payments to recipients need to be manageable in the long term.
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