00:00So your report touches on the changing trajectory of China's Belt and Road Initiative,
00:05from being a major lender to developing countries to now holding back as it waits to collect on its
00:11debts. Why do so many countries owe money to China now? And where is China still lending out funding
00:18to, if any? China's Belt and Road Initiative was in full swing in around 2016, 2017. And for most
00:26of those, or a majority of those loans, China's actual loan terms offer five to eight year grace
00:31periods. And so five to eight years on the mid 2010s meant that this period now around the sort of mid
00:382020s was always going to be a crunch period. And then there was one other factor that has sort of
00:43increased the wave of repayments that we're seeing now. And that's China's participation in the debt
00:49service suspension initiative, the G20 initiative during the pandemic. So this was an international
00:54deal that saw countries pause repayments. That is why we're at record levels in 2025.
01:00On the topic of where China's lending has been most resilient, you know, our analysis shows
01:06two key groups. One of them we sort of think about as being sort of strategic and the other one's more
01:13about resources. China has continued to lend, you know, the majority of its remaining lending has gone
01:19to countries that are critical minerals producers and battery metals exporters. But on the strategic
01:26front, China still lends to all of its neighboring countries quite heavily. And then the other factor,
01:33and the one that's most relevant for Taiwan, is that China has lent a lot to countries when it's tried to
01:40secure the one China policies. Honduras in 2023, Nicaragua in 2021, the Solomon Islands, Burkina Faso,
01:48the Dominican Republic, all these countries saw big, largest of their kind loan deals from China
01:55in the aftermath of swapping from Taiwan and adopting the one China policy.
02:01So China has now responded to your report saying that they do follow international conventions and
02:06market rules. Now, do you think the international community will put on more pressure to China
02:12to try to change the way that its infrastructure funding works? And what do you think China's strategy will
02:17be going forward? I think public outreach from China on the topic is likely to increase in the next few
02:23years, because, you know, for all developing countries, 2024 was a record year for payments.
02:29And then for the most vulnerable and low-income countries, 2025 was a record year. So for each
02:35country that China is engaged with as a partner that it has also lent to, being a debt collector is not
02:41diplomatic by nature. And so it will have to play this balancing act between recouping the money that
02:46it's lent out and then also managing its relationship with that country. Whether that causes a sort of a
02:53big change in how China approaches these things is very difficult to say. But there has been some
02:59positive signs that China has been more likely to engage in debt restructuring deals. We've seen a few
03:06cases in Africa where China has come to the table, but there are still big barriers to China offering,
03:14you know, debt haircuts right down of its debts.
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