FINANCE

China’s hidden debt diplomacy

&NewLine;<p><strong><em>China&comma;&NewLine;world 2<sup>nd<&sol;sup> largest economy may have been quite diplomatic in managing&NewLine;huge undisclosed debts as revealed by<&sol;em><&sol;strong><strong><em> Christoph Trebesch&comma; a&nbsp&semi;&NewLine;co-author at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy<&sol;em><&sol;strong><strong><em><&sol;em><&sol;strong><&sol;p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>The West&NewLine;still hasn’t understood how profoundly China’s rise has changed the international&NewLine;financial system&comma;” professor and economist Christoph Trebesch told Germany’s&NewLine;Spiegel in an interview following the release of a new report on China’s&NewLine;&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;hidden debt&comma;” which Trebesch co-authored at the Kiel Institute for the World&NewLine;Economy&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>According&NewLine;to the report&comma; the amount of foreign debt held by China is 50&percnt; greater than&NewLine;previously thought&comma; making it the largest official&NewLine;creditor in the world&period; More than twice the size of the International Monetary&NewLine;Fund and the World Bank combined&comma; says The Economist&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>The value&NewLine;of China’s outbound credit lines has surged from virtually nil in 2000 to over&NewLine;&dollar;700 billion today but China has kept much of that debt &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;hidden” by not&NewLine;reporting it to bodies like the IMF&period; The Fund’s managing director Christine&NewLine;Lagarde has highlighted the lack of transparency in Chinese loans many times&NewLine;before&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>Credit&NewLine;rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s aren’t privy to the debt&NewLine;either because they only track sovereign loans issued by banks or bondholders&NewLine;while most of China’s foreign loans are issued by the government itself&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>Opponents&NewLine;of China’s lending practices have long accused Beijing of engaging in debt&NewLine;diplomacy&comma; with Xi Jinping’s famous Belt and Road Initiative &lpar;BRI&rpar; frequently&NewLine;criticized as &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;economic colonialism” that risks trapping developing nations in&NewLine;debt&period; Djibouti&comma; for example&comma; is carrying a Chinese debt equivalent to 70&percnt; of&NewLine;its GDP&period; China’s top 50 borrowers owe a value equivalent to over 15&percnt; of their&NewLine;respective GDPs&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>The&NewLine;world’s seen this before&comma; in the 1970’s&comma; when banks from the U&period;S&period; and Europe&NewLine;issued commodity-backed loans to emerging economies in Africa and Latin&NewLine;America&period; When those commodity prices tanked the economies spiralled deeper into&NewLine;debt&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>According&NewLine;to The Economist&comma; many of the recipients of new loans from China were also&NewLine;granted debt relief by Western creditors after defaulting on previous loans&period;&NewLine;China&comma; too&comma; has offered restructuring plans and write offs on over 140 of its&NewLine;foreign loans in the past decade&comma; but other times it has seized strategic assets&NewLine;as collateral – such as the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;&NewLine;<p>As China&NewLine;seeks to rein in the risk of its own domestic debt and offset the drag of its&NewLine;slowing economy&comma; the country’s outbound lending might slowdown&period; Some debtors&comma;&NewLine;meanwhile&comma; have already started to pushback against China’s aggressive lending&NewLine;schemes&period; But there’s still a lot of Chinese-issued sovereign debt out there&NewLine;waiting to mature&period; Apparently&comma; about 50&percnt; more than we realize&period; <&sol;p>&NewLine;

Openlife Reporter

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