Yes, but China benefits in several ways that temper this positive take.

1. by owning the (often insane) debt from the programs

2. by getting a lot of Chinese jobs in the country

3. by gaining influence over the country (at the expense of Western influence, if you see this as a competition.

Another problem here, although it’s not a benefit to China, is that the quality of infrastructure built by China is often terrible, making the cost and debt even more problematic.

Now, having said all that, the US isn’t necessarily doing much better. And the poor quality Chinese roads (just as an example) are still infinitely better than the competing local-built roads.

Yes, China benefits tremendously. However the African countries reap some rewards too. It’s hard to take away infrastructure once it’s built short of starting a war. If the African countries can figure out how to maintain and add to all the new infrastructure, they may have the upper hand in the very long term.

Yes, unless it's useless infrastructure, like the Mattala International Airport in Sri Lanka. And to be clear, roads don't generally fall into that category. And also, China owns major roads in Indiana, and I'm not necessarily opposed to that happening anywhere. I'm just saying that there are reasons to temper the rhetoric that claims China is doing such an amazing job "helping" third world nations.

And as for starting a war, China doesn't need to threaten to start a war with a country in order to have the threat of such playing into Ethiopia's leadership decisions. You don't want to piss off China any more than you want to piss off the USA.

China traps a lot of these countries in debt and then forces them to sell their existing infrastructure to them when they can't service it.

Sri Lanka had to hand over a port for example.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-07/sri-lankans-protest-c...

Unfortunately, projects with very long term benefits that require political will to maintain are not sustainable in Democracies.

Is this why countries with democracies in North America, Europe, East Asia, South East Asia and South Asia have see such decades long explosive growth?

Actually most developed Democracies have economies that are relatively decoupled from their governments and their politics. Corporations operate relatively autonomously, and it is corporations which fuel the explosive growth we observe.

On the other hand, developing countries often have bloated bureaucracies and corrupt governments that are heavily involved in the private sector and corporate activity.

The difficulties I mentioned in my original post are those in which the Government is heavily involved. Corporate investment in properly functioning nations are free from (public) political hindrances.

You said democracies which is what I was referring to. If anything corporations only really exist in countries with democracies.