The ability of the World Bank to strike an appropriate balance between country demands and global goods depends on the institution’s shareholders. Yet, the deterioration in the bilateral relationship between the United States and China now threatens to undermine effective governance at the instituti...

China has emerged as a leading participant in multilateral development organizations. In many ways, this is a welcome development. Today’s global challenges, including COVID-19 and climate change, require an international response and have prompted renewed calls for increased multilateral engagement...

A considerable body of recent research attempts to shed light on China’s bilateral aid and finance flows, but there have been fewer efforts focused on China’s participation in multilateral development channels. As a result, China’s role across the landscape of multilateral institutions and funds is ...

On May 18, 2021, CGD Senior Fellow Scott Morris testified before the House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy at a hearing titled “Examining Belt and Road: The Lending Practices of the People’s Republic of China and Impact...

China is the world’s largest official creditor, but we lack basic facts about the terms and conditions of its lending. Very few contracts between Chinese lenders and their government borrowers have ever been published or studied. This paper is the first systematic analysis of the legal terms of Chin...

As much as current US policy has sought to characterize China’s lending program in blunt and strictly negative terms, the reality is mixed. 

We examine the behavior of Chinese government lenders in two debt rescheduling episodes: a “low stakes” case involving Seychelles and a “high stakes” case involving the Republic of Congo. The fact that the Republic of Congo was worse off after rescheduling its debts with Beijing underscores the impo...