This is the best summary I could come up with:

Lending from Chinese state-backed banks has helped to build railways in Kenya and power plants in Cambodia, along with thousands of other projects.

To mitigate the risk of future defaults, Chinese policymakers have introduced a number of measures, including reducing loans for infrastructure projects while ramping up emergency lending.

China has created “a safety net” for countries in financial distress – “and, by extension, their highly exposed Chinese creditors”.

The AidData report cites figures from the Gallup World Poll which shows that public approval ratings for China in low- and middle-income countries fell from 56% in 2019 to 40% in 2021.

But the AidData researchers found that between the early years of the BRI (2014-2017) and the latter period (2018-2021), Chinese lenders increased the maximum penalty interest rate for late repayments from 3% to 8.7%.

Bradley Parks, one of the report’s authors and the executive director of AidData, said: “Beijing is trying to find its footing as the world’s largest official debt collector at a time when many of its biggest borrowers are illiquid or insolvent.

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