By Tripti Lahiri
From the article:
The leaders of dozens of African nations are in Beijing this week for a major China-Africa cooperation summit that takes place every three years. African leaders have come away from these meetings in the past with billions of dollars in investment commitments from China.
This year, China is expected to use the meeting, which began today (Sep. 3), to address concerns over transparency around its loans to African countries, and over the trade deficit they are racking up with China. At a business forum today, Chinese president Xi Jinping said China’s financing to Africa was not about “vanity projects” (paywall) but about “bottlenecks to development.”
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A report from the Center for Global Development (pdf), also based in Washington, pinpointed eight countries globally as being in danger of debt distress from Chinese financing, including Djibouti, where China has its only overseas military base and has financed an amount equivalent to 75% of the country’s GDP. John Hopkins University’s China-Africa Research Initiative (pdf) found Chinese loans to be a significant contributor to debt distress in three countries: the Republic of Congo, Zambia, and Djibouti.
Read the full article here.