I think the take generally is that China was fairly naive about its investments. Thats the belt and road projects would easily payoff as this has historically been working inside of China.
I do think the US/EU could learn a bit from China here. My take is that the Chinese way has been something along the lines of, here take this loan, we will build some infrastructure, and at the same time move in some mining equipment, port or whatever is needed. The loan terms are way over ambitious but China is not trying to tell them how to govern. When the US goes in, its all about cleaning up the politics/human rights/something other clauses that all get tied to the money.