Net foreign purchases of long-term US securities swung to 22.0 billion dollars in February, after a deficit of 25.1 billion dollars in January, the Treasury Department said in a monthly report.
The revised January gap was much deeper than the Treasury's prior estimate of 17.9 billion dollars.
The February surplus was more than double most analysts' forecast of 10.0 billion dollars.
However, including short-term US securities, the balance of international capital flows in the United States amounted to an outflow of 97.0 billion dollars in February, after plumbing a record 146.8 billion dollars in January.
For the second consecutive month, investors in China, excluding Hong Kong, sharply curtailed their purchases of US Treasury bonds. Only 4.6 billion more were bought in February than in January, the weakest monthly increase since July 2008.
A senior US Federal Reserve board member on Tuesday said he had no reason to believe that China would stop buying US Treasury bonds, amid concerns about the strength of the assets.
Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a member of the US central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, said China had no reason to scale back its holding of US debt.
"I don't see why they would. The Chinese are very sophisticated, they understand us very well," he told reporters in Hong Kong.
"I don't... detect any desire on the part of the Chinese authorities to do anything that might not help us, or upset the apple cart of restoring a good tone in the credit markets and regrowing our economy."
China became the world's top holder of US Treasury bonds last September, and currently holds around 800 billion dollars, according to official US data.
But some Chinese commentators have voiced frustration that Beijing has not found higher-yielding investments for its huge forex reserves and that huge US stimulus measures could drive down the value of dollar-based assets.
In a rare expression of official concern over Beijing's huge bond holdings, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month called on the United States to safeguard its investments.
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