They are fucking idiots of the highest order. Are they not familiar with how the CCP uses debt-trap diplomacy to gain control over foreign economies and their infrastructures? Poverty makes desperados do the dumbest things.
By
Globely Staff
February 7, 2022
These Are the Countries Most in Debt to China
Studies reveal that the true amount of sovereign debt owed by recipients of Chinese lending is vastly underreported.
Chinese Debt-Trap Diplomacy?
The surge in China’s overseas aid, financing, and investment has triggered accusations of “debt-trap diplomacy.” China’s critics allege that it
aims to saddle developing countries in loans, forcing them to make strategic concessions — like giving long-term access to a commercial port that may have military value — in exchange for debt restructuring or forgiveness.
There is little public evidence indicating that Beijing has a grand “debt-trap” strategy. In reality, the BRI has become so vast in scale and, in many ways, incoherent. And this is because the drivers of Chinese overseas development financing are many.
Which Country Owes the Most Money to China?
Venezuela is the country with the greatest sovereign debt exposure to China, in terms of direct lending (excluding portfolio holdings), according to AidData’s 2021 study, totaling $74.7 billion.
Angola comes in next ($39.9 billion), followed by
Pakistan ($24.4 billion),
Ethiopia ($10.9 billion), and
Sri Lanka ($10.4 billion).
But these and other recipients of Chinese financing are all economies of varying sizes. In general, the larger the economy, the more debt a country is capable of taking on. So a more valuable metric for the countries that have exposed themselves to the greatest risk in borrowing from China is the debt-to-GDP ratio, which represents the amount of debt in proportion to economic output (a measurement of the size of the economy).
Lack of Transparency in Chinese Development Financing
Chinese overseas lending practices are notoriously opaque. This lack of transparency is often built into contracts. Beijing muscles weaker parties into agreeing to non-disclosure agreements. As a result, the terms and even the scale of Beijing’s lending are often obscured.
Both the AidData study as well as research by scholars at the Kiel Institute in Germany also point toward “hidden debt” in the hundreds of billions of dollars owed to China. A 2021 study by the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University
estimated that Zambia’s actual debt to Chinese lenders is double the amount reported by the country’s previous government.
https://globelynews.com/world/top-countries-most-in-debt-to-china/
