Category: Debt Trap
Fears that China Will Seize Mombasa Port Unfounded: Upcoming Report
Throughout the last two years, Kenya has been rattled by reports that its debt to China for the troubled Standard Gauge Railway could lead to the seizure of the Port of Mombasa. Since then this story and the other ‘debt trap’ narratives like it have largely been debunked.
Chinese Infrastructure Loans to Africa Are Not Aid – But What Are They?
As concern grows as to how countries like Kenya will repay their loans to China, navigating misinformation about Chinese lending remains challenging. Johns Hopkins University Professor Deborah Brautigam, one of the world’s leading experts on Chinese lending to Africa, unpacked the issue in a public lecture on ...
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Talks Debts Traps and Vaccines at Two Sessions
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi again dismissed the idea that Chinese projects are trapping Africa in debt, instead calling them ‘monuments of cooperation.’ Wang made the remarks on Monday at a press conference on the sidelines of the Two Sessions meeting ...
Public Editor of Uganda’s Daily Monitor Newspaper Acknowledges Errors in Entebbe Airport Coverage
Uganda’s Daily Monitor newspaper has for the first time acknowledged some wrongdoing in a November report that sowed panic about China seizing Entebbe International Airport. Odoobo C. Bichachi, the Nation Media Group’s Uganda Public Editor, admitted in an op-ed on Friday that the article was misleading. ...
Is China’s Lending Particularly “Aggressive”?
Amid the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and the bleakest prognosis on climate change yet, you may have missed the ongoing saga of Uganda’s Entebbe Airport. A quick recap: Uganda loaned $325 million from China Exim Bank to upgrade the airport. ...
Entebbe Airport Clarification Draws Lackluster Media Response
Last December, the Daily Monitor in Uganda unleashed a firestorm with an article claiming that the Entebbe International Airport was in danger of being seized as collateral for an unpaid Chinese loan. The story was poorly-sourced and ill-informed (for example, the loan in question wasn’t out of its ...
New Research Concludes Uganda’s Entebbe Airport Was Never at Risk of Being Seized by Chinese Creditors
Uganda's Entebbe International Airport was never at risk of being seized by Chinese creditors in the event of a default on the $200 million loan, according to new research by Brad Parks and Ammar Malik at AidData in the United States. ...
An Exchange Between British Lawmakers Highlights How Bad Information About China Makes Its Way Into the Foreign Policymaking Process
A virtual meeting of the House of Lords International Relations and Defense Committee in London on Wednesday revealed the extent to which faulty information about China's engagement in Africa has become embedded in the UK's foreign policy process. In a brief ...
How the Chinese Debt Trap Narrative Spreads in Washington
A webinar convened on Friday by the Middle East Policy Council in Washington, D.C. highlights how the Chinese debt trap narrative has become an accepted truth among U.S. stakeholders, despite a lack of evidence that Beijing intentionally loads up developing countries with unsustainable levels of ...
IMF = Good, China = Debt Trap ??
The New York-based geopolitical consulting firm Eurasia Group's media unit, GZERO, published a new infographic on Thursday that sums up the deeply ingrained yet highly simplistic media narrative in the United States about Western institutions like the IMF versus China: A) ...