And then bulldoze you on the road :D

And then take your roads, which were collateral

You should check Sri Lanka's, Zambia's and Pakistan's foreign debts. You will be absolutely surprised majority of those debts are from American private institutions. This article lack any numbers verifiable of their hint claim that China is the sole lender. It is a hit piece. Terrible write-up. If I wrote like this for my papers in college, I would have easily got D or C- at best.

This article has no "hint claim" that China is the sole lender. In fact, there's no such thing as "the front of the line" when you're the sole lender.

It's an article about Chinese lenders rejecting and sabotaging the traditional practice of lenders working together to avoid a default. They're trying to grab as much as they can for themselves while the debtor falls into chaos. You don't need to be the sole or even majority lender to cause immense pain through short-sighted greed by doing that.

Their intent all along was to wait for the defaults to start pouring in so they can claim all the assets they funded. The speedrun way to plant infrastructure around the globe and manage their own banana republics without raising the hackles of an adversary. Making a deal was never an option.

This is why Denmark veto’ed China lending Greenland money to build a better airport.

There is nothing bad with the loan. But the loaners are not always so good at paying back.

>You should check Sri Lanka's, Zambia's and Pakistan's foreign debts. You will be absolutely surprised majority of those debts are from American private institutions.

Do you have any data to back your assertion? The quick search I did on Sri Lankan debt suggests something different.

https://www.erd.gov.lk/index.php?option=com_content&view=art...

https://www.treasury.gov.lk/api/file/a969a81b-13d9-4337-a5b7...

Burner account making claims with no data, then being disproven immediately by other commenters providing data? Seems super legit.

Like a lot of countries, China has a social influence department. China's just seems massive because they pop up everywhere making insanely obvious claims/comments.

They're either just really bad at it, or these attempts just smokescreen their proper influence campaign.

> which has kept other major lenders from stepping in to help

I wonder what "stepping in to help" is supposed to mean in this context.

Also, "found paying back that debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to keep schools open, provide electricity and pay for food and fuel". No shit, servicing debts requires money, who could have thought. If only everyone could just print more money like the US does to service it's loans (oh wait, it seems like it no longer can do that!)

People talk about "belt and road" being soft power, but that sounds ineffective soft power.

The problem for China is that countries won't be cooperating willingly. The moment shooting war starts between China and US, the countries will nationalize anything sold to China, default on the loans, and call the US asking them to take over the bases.

One problem China has is that they think the US is forcing other countries to be allies and enforce their hegemony. This leads them to think that they need to act same way and coerce other countries into their sphere. US is more subtle, using "soft power", mutual interest, and limited coercion. The US also doesn't care about most of the world beyond companies having access.