Chinese Debt

Pakistan has decided to approach its all-weather ally China with a formal request to restructure its USD 15 billion energy debt to help the cash-strapped country wriggle out of its financial woes. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal and Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb would visit China this week, the Express Tribune newspaper quoted highly placed sources as saying. While Iqbal's visit was pre-planned, the finance minister is being sent as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's special messenger, they added. Iqbal is scheduled to attend the Global Development Initiative forum to be held in China from July 11 to 13. As the finance minister's visit was not scheduled earlier, Pakistan's ambassador to Beijing has been instructed to arrange meetings with Chinese authorities, said the sources. A Cabinet member, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the premier decided the issue of Chinese Independent Power Producers' (IPP) debt should be immediately taken up for re-profiling. Accord

African countries feel they have been trapped in Beijing's debt circle after China showed reluctance in lending financial support to them, Federico Giuliani writes in Inside Over.

The world's low-income countries owe 37 per cent of their debt to China in 2022, compared to just 24 per cent in bilateral debts to the rest of the world

Pakistan is blindly following Sri Lanka's path which will lead the country to fall into the Chinese debt trap

China exacerbated but didn't mostly cause the problem whose roots lay in borrowing countries' broken politics and economic mismanagement. The loans may only have solved some problems, writes T N Ninan

Late repayments could trigger cross-defaults as the firm's liabilities involved as many as 128 banks and over 121 non-banking institutions

Chinese authorities have started to evaluate systemically important banks this year by measuring assets of the nation's 30 largest lenders.

While their spending and borrowing is good for lenders, brands and economic growth, it is also a risk as they add to China's fast-growing debt