On March 25, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, the heads of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank proposed that the leaders of the world's 20 largest economies, the Group of 20 (G20), provide breathing space by suspending the collection of debt service on...

The "hidden debt" (US$ 309 billion) and "underreported debt" (US$ 385 billion) problem with Chinese loans is not as serious as the numbers suggested in a recently published AidData report. The median figure for "underreported debt" is 1.8 percent of GDP, however AidData reports that the...

THIS PAPER PROVIDES AN EVALUATION of China’s participation in the G20’s COVID-19 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI). Through analysis of available data, more than 100 interviews, and fieldwork in Angola, Kenya, and Zambia, we argue, with some caveats, that the DSSI was a success....

On March 25, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, the heads of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank proposed that the leaders of the world's 20 largest economies, the Group of 20 (G20), provide breathing space by suspending the collection of debt service on...

As China is poised to become the world's largest creditor, concerns about debt sustainability have grown. Yet considerable confusion exists over what is likely to happen when a government runs into trouble repaying its Chinese loans. In this paper, the authors draw on CARI data to review the...

As China is poised to become the world's largest creditor, concerns about debt sustainability have grown. Yet considerable confusion exists over what is likely to happen when a government runs into trouble repaying its Chinese loans. In this paper, the authors draw on CARI data to review the...

From modest beginnings in 1960, China has recently become a highly visible actor in Africa's lending landscape. African borrowers have built roads, installed electrical grids, and modernized their airports with Chinese finance. Yet when commodity prices and growth rates began to tumble in 2015,...

On September 29, 2021, AidData, a research lab at William & Mary, released a detailed overview of their new data on China's global lending, "Banking on the Belt and Road." The report has generated much commentary. In this briefing paper, Deborah Brautigam and Yufan Huang examine the data...