The global discussion of the growing debt crisis in some Global South countries has been frustratingly slanted around the assumption that Chinese lending is particularly opaque. This is not to say that Chinese lending isn’t opaque – it is. In fact, some Chinese loan contracts are so secretive they forbid the disclosure of the very existence of the loan itself.
Rather, the issue is the pretense – widespread in discussions of Chinese lending in Western capitals – that this secrecy is somehow unique to Chinese lending.
