West Fears IMF Now Paying For China Loans

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has lent more than $1 trillion to more than 100 countries through the scheme, dwarfing Western spending in the developing world and stoking anxieties about the spread of Beijing’s power and influence, as written by Michael Bennon and Francis Fukuyama in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Many analysts claim Chinese lending through the BRI is "debt trap diplomacy" designed to give China leverage over other countries and even seize their infrastructure and resources. I Image: CGTN

Many analysts claim Chinese lending through the BRI is "debt trap diplomacy" designed to give China leverage over other countries and even seize their infrastructure and resources. Many projects have failed to earn the returns that analysts expected.

This is true not just of Sri Lanka but also of Argentina, Kenya, Malaysia, Montenegro, Pakistan, and Tanzania.

The problem for the West was less that China would acquire ports and other strategic properties in developing countries and more that these countries would become dangerously indebted—forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other Western-backed international financial institutions for help repaying their Chinese loans.

To avoid that dire outcome—and to avoid spending Western taxpayer dollars to service bad Chinese debts—the US and other countries should push for broad-based reforms that would make it more difficult to take advantage of the IMF and other international financial institutions, imposing tougher criteria on countries seeking bailouts and demanding more transparency in lending from all their members, including China.

WEEKLY FEATURE : Jose Mari Chan And The Christmas Anthem