Chinese President Xi Jinping speaking at the Belt and Road Forum in April 2019. Credit: Mark Schiefelbein/AP Images
China is building a global empire of debt. Since 2005, it has invested over $2 trillion overseas, including hundreds of billions of loans for projects that would struggle to get financing from private lenders. When these enormous, risky infrastructure projects don’t pay off — as often happens — recipient countries can face debt distress and become vulnerable to coercion.
In 2017, the United States National Security Strategy named “predatory” Chinese debt diplomacy as a threat to the national interest. For the last three years, senior Trump administration officials have crisscrossed the world chiding other countries for joining Xi Jinping’s One Belt One Road initiative (OBOR) and lecturing them that cooperation with China doesn’t serve their interests. When Italy joined OBOR last year, the National Security Council tweeted, “Endorsing [OBOR] lends legitimacy to China’s predatory approach to investment and will bring no benefits to the Italian people.”
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
When Ken Wilcox, a former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, moved to Shanghai in 2011, he was optimistic and eager to start up the bank's new joint venture in China. A decade later, however, he is extremely cynical about U.S. business interests in China. While analysts will, rightly, be debating SVB's missteps in the U.S. for the foreseeable future, Wilcox insists the bank's challenges in China should not be overlooked.
The former secretary of state talks about how the Trump administration changed U.S.-China relations; why he accused Beijing of genocide in Xinjiang; and why U.S. politicians should visit Taiwan.