Recent findings by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center that China’s two largest policy banks, China Exim Bank and the China Development Bank, sharply curtailed their lending from $75 billion in 2016 to just $4 billion, was a stunning surprise.
Long before the COVID-19-induced economic crisis, we started hearing that China’s loans to developing countries were beginning to slow, but nothing like this. Going from $75b to $4b in such a short period of time is a dramatic course correction. There’s just no other way to say it.