China and the Dirty Secrets of ‘National Development’

Chinese workers stand at the construction site of Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) during the Presidential Inspection of the SGR Nairobi-Naivasha Phase 2A project in Nairobi, Kenya, on June 23, 2018. Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP

The Financial Times today cited new work by scholars at Boston University on the global reduction of Chinese lending. The big story is that while Chinese lending rivaled that of the World Bank by the mid-2010s, it’s now plummeting.

China Development Bank and the Import-Export Bank lent $75 billion in 2016. Last year they only lent $4 billion. These rates are being driven down by shifts in strategy in Beijing, growing evidence that this lending has contributed to a debt crisis in the global south, and by domestic pressure to spend more money at home.

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by Cobus van Staden

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