Overseas institutions continued to buy Chinese bonds in March, data from the country's only authorized general China government bond depository showed.

The overseas institutions' deposit of Chinese bonds in the China Central Depository & Clearing Co. Ltd. totaled 1.51525 trillion yuan (225.5 billion U.S. dollars) by the end of March, up 2.785 billion yuan month on month.

This marked the fourth consecutive month of net purchase of Chinese bonds by foreign investors.

Official data showed that Chinese bonds held by international investors surged 46 percent year-on-year by the end of 2018.

China's yuan-denominated bonds started to be added to the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Index on Monday. A total of 356 government and policy bank bonds will be added into the index over the next 20 months.