A Closer Look At China's Controversial Lending Practices Around The World

Over the last decade, China has rapidly expanded its financial presence across the globe. It has issued massive loans through its flagship foreign policy project, the Belt and Road Initiative. It has inked contracts with governments from Latin America to Africa and Eastern Europe to South Asia. But despite being the world's largest official creditor, many of the basic facts around Beijing's foreign lending are still unknown.

Crucial details about the terms and conditions of China and its state-owned entities' development and infrastructure loans in such places are still murky. Few of those contracts between foreign governments and Chinese lenders have been made public.

But a recent study by the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank, aims to pull the curtain back on Chinese lending practices by offering a first-of-its-kind analysis of 100 contracts across 24 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, including Montenegro, Kyrgyzstan, and Serbia.

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