A report published on Tuesday by the AidData research lab at William & Mary university in Williamsburg, Virginia, found that the United States is the largest recipient of loans from China.
The report, entitled Chasing China: Learning to Play by Beijing’s Global Lending Rules, found that 1,193 Chinese banks, investment companies, and government institutions loaned $2.2 trillion to recipients in 179 countries between 2000 and 2023.
AidData researchers drew two surprising conclusions from their research: “China’s overseas lending portfolio is vastly larger than previously understood,” and its loans to the developed world are an order of magnitude larger than widely believed.
The common image of Chinese loans is banks pumping huge loans to Third World countries through China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The ostensible purpose of BRI was to help developing countries build vital infrastructure, but the projects are often criticized as unprofitable “debt traps” approved by spendthrift local governments that saddle the borrowing nations with debts to Beijing they can never repay.
Whatever the flaws of BRI might be, AidData determined that only about 20 percent of China’s titanic lending portfolio involves infrastructure projects in developing nations. Meanwhile, the amount China loans to developed nations “skyrocketed from 12% to 76%” between 2000 and 2023. Ten of the top 20 destinations for Chinese loans are “high-income” countries.
“Another major discovery is that Chinese state-owned creditors have bankrolled approximately 10,000 projects and activities in 72 high-income countries to the tune of nearly $1 trillion,” the report said.
“Much of the lending to wealthy countries is focused on critical infrastructure, critical minerals, and the acquisition of high-tech assets like semiconductor companies,” noted AidData’s lead author, Brad Parks.
Hellbound and Down 