President Hakainde Hichilema restated his longstanding commitment to deal with all of Zambia’s creditors equally in a future debt restructuring deal and vowed not to give any preferential treatment to Chinese creditors.

“What we don’t intend to do is to cross-subsidize — one debt stock holder paying a higher price, if you want to put it that way, or having better terms and another having worse terms,” Hichilema told the Financial Times. “One creditor being of Chinese origin or another origin is not much of the issue here. It’s to make sure we come out of the problem,” he added.