The Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS), which is conducted by the IMF, requires participating economies to provide data on their external portfolio securities investment, according to the introduction on the IMF's website.
China has also joined a survey conducted by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) on its banks' outstanding external assets and liabilities, the SAFE said in a statement.
The SAFE said it will publish detailed data under the two surveys in the near future.
China has changed the way it calculates quarterly gross domestic product data and started publishing foreign exchange reserves on a monthly basis, in line with the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS).