> Yes, debt is on the rise in the developing world, and Chinese overseas lending is, for the first time, a part of the story. But a number of us academics who have studied China’s practices in detail have found scant evidence of a pattern indicating that Chinese banks, acting at the government’s behest, are deliberately over-lending or funding loss-making projects to secure strategic advantages for China.
> The main example of these purported ploys is the Hambantota Port in southern Sri Lanka: The government handed control over the port to a Chinese company in 2017 after struggling to make its loan payments to China. But that’s a special case, and it is widely misunderstood.
> China does not publish details about its overseas lending, but the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University (which I direct) has collected information on more than 1,000 Chinese loans in Africa between 2000 and 2017, totaling more than $143 billion. Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center has identified and tracked more than $140 billion in Chinese loans to Latin America and the Caribbean since 2005.
> Based on the findings of both institutes, it seems that the risks of B.R.I. are often overstated or mischaracterized.