China’s rapidly expanding footprint in developing countries around the world is facing mounting scrutiny, even as states across Asia and Africa compete for Chinese investment dollars.
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China has poured billions of dollars into infrastructure projects across Asia and Africa as part of its Belt and Road project, providing what many acknowledge is badly-needed investment for developing countries — but what’s at the same time sunk several nations into deep debt. Analysts point to Beijing’s offers of cheap loans and then demands of control over infrastructure as compensation when those debts cannot be paid off.
In 2017, Sri Lanka, with more than $1 billion in debt owed to China, handed over a port to Chinese state-owned companies. According to the non-profit Center for Global Development, the countries most affected by Chinese debt include Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Laos, the Maldives, Mongolia, Montenegro, and Pakistan, with the first three facing national debt at more than 75 percent of their GDP as of March 2018.
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