The fact that we need China to to keep our economy solvent is troubling. If they stopped buying our debt government would shut down.
I'm not really sure how that thinking works. We don't. By far greater than China we need domestic consumer spending to keep it solvent.
First off a huge portion of the debt that was purchased was done at negative interest rates. Right up front we made 2%. China literally said "here please take our money and give us some pieces of paper because your usd is so much more stable than anywhere else we can hide our money"
We are the Reserve currency.
As our economy weakens in our debt becomes easier and easier to pay off. There's a built-in buffering mechanism as such that our own domestic currency is the world's Reserve currency by default.
Japan owns almost as much of our debt is China. And the total external Holdings of our debt is only about one-third with domestic governments and individual's own 2/3.
Why are you not worried about Japan controlling us? You shouldn't be. But there is an undue focus on China and our debt.
Edit- my post has an error. Japan does not own real dollars close to China. I was looking at percentages for a few years ago. Which cover up the reality. China went on a buying spree and does indeed have a much larger portion currently. But I'm still focus on the same point that the great majority of our debt is held domestically and I'm not sure how our government would suddenly become insolvent because of China who holds a minority of our debt