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I don’t see how China buying U.S. debt would lead to more inbound foreign capital into China. Can you elaborate on this?

China has run a persistent trade surplus with the US [1] so naturally it's accumulated a lot of USD, about $3T [2]. And there's only one place to keep that much money safely which is US Treasury i.e., lend it back to the US.

[1] https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/china/foreign-exchange-reserves

Thats because they need to put their export earning somewhere and US govt debt is the safest place to put it.

Wouldn't that be Chinese capital investing in the US?

They bought US debt because they are confident the US will pay it off, it’s a ROI?

Not to attract capital…

No. They bought it because the excess capital produced by artificially low exchange rate used to stimulate domestic production and exports is too big to be parked anywhere else.

They didn't think it would lose money though, right?

With negative real interest rates they DO lose purchasing power and I think they thought about such risk. But making China a production powerhouse and technology transfer associated with it was a much more important goal.