BEIJING - China's trust industry reported steady expansion last year, reversing the shrinking trend since 2018, industry data shows.

The country's outstanding trust assets reached 20.55 trillion yuan ($3.23 trillion) at the end of 2021, up 0.29 percent from the previous year, according to the China Trustee Association (CTA).

It marked an increase of 110 billion yuan, or 0.52 percent, from that at the end of the third quarter, the data showed.

The scale of trust assets managed by the trust industry reported negative growth from 2018 to 2020, said Zhou Xiaoming, a non-executive director of the CTA.

Despite the shrinking scale of trust assets since 2018, the operating income of the trust industry maintained relatively stable, CTA data showed.

Last year, the total profit of the industry reached 60.17 billion yuan, up 3.17 percent year-on-year, said the association.