chinaglobalsouth.com/analysis/chi...

thediplomat.com/2025/09/as-c...

As with most agreements, this recent China-CELAC Joint Action Plan includes significant infrastructure investment--the Americas Quarterly particularly emphasizes such investments in Brazil, Chile, and Peru, as well as "friendly ports" in Panama.

The full report: interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/pea.... A special shoutout to AidData too--their meticulous work was cited widely throughout this report and used to support Lowy's quantitative analysis.

Regardless, the Belt and Road is a massively ambitious project. How it affects the finances of developing companies is but one aspect, but is certainly one we find fascinating. This paper gives helpful context and nuance to how we might interpret the BRI's role in LMIC.

So in part because of the BRI, this decade is defined for China as one of a drain on the budgets of low-and middle-income countries. Personally, my takeaway was more interest in how Xi and the Party handle this shift rhetorically. Can they still claim to be a benevolent lender?

"Because China’s [BRI] lending spree peaked in the mid 2010s, those grace periods began expiring in the early 2020s. The combination of relatively short maturities and lower concessionality...meant the early 2020s was always likely to be a crunch period for developing country repayments to China."

So, despite a half decade or so of lending, the 2020s were always primed to begin China's period of debt collecting. In their own words:

Over a ~5 year period, China became a massive lending party and functioned as a bilateral banker. This shifted in the 2020s. Why? The key is in the details: Chinese agencies generally follow similar lending terms--grace periods of 3-5yrs & maturities of 15-20yrs.

The answer is of course complex, but its roots are in the boom of foreign lending in the 2010's as China initiated the BRI. As the massive project got underway, Chinese agencies began investing in BRI countries, from resource extraction to infrastructure.