BEIJING, June 14 (Xinhua) -- China's foreign exchange reserves have topped 900 billion U.S. dollars, remaining the world's largest ahead of Japan, the China Securities Journal reported here Wednesday.

China's reserves -- which overtook Japan's in February -- had reached 875.1 billion dollars by the end of March, with an increase of 56.2 billion dollars in the first quarter of the year alone.

The steady growth of trade surplus and direct foreign investment are regarded as the major reasons for the surging foreign exchange reserves, the newspaper cited an official source as saying.

China has recorded successive trade surpluses for 25 months. In the first five months of 2006, the surplus amounted to 46.8 billion dollars, a rise of 41 percent over the same period of last year.

A surplus of 101.9 billion dollars last year has led experts to predict that it would exceed 100 billion again this year.

Japan reported last week that its foreign exchange reserves had hit 860.2 billion dollars by the end of April. Enditem