SAIS China Africa Research Initiative

CARI released a new briefing paper last week examining this summer's misleading media claims that China would be able to seize land in Montenegro if the Montenegrin government defaulted on a highway loan.

On June 21, 2021, the French public television channel France 2 aired a report in which it was stated that Montenegro, a heavily indebted nation, was at risk of “having to cede some of its land to China” as a result of its inability to pay back a loan for the construction of a highway. According to reporters, Montenegro’s Port of Bar could be annexed by China “completely legally,” thanks to an “extraordinary contract” that had been “never seen before in Europe (...).” In reality, reporters erroneously presented a standard sovereign immunity waiver as evidence that China is entitled to seize land in Montenegro in the case of a payment default, reflecting their lack of understanding of normal international legal practice. Authors Laure Deron, Thierry Pairault, and Paola Pasquali argue that criticism of problematic Chinese lending practices must be based on facts, not unfair and misguided denunciation.

Check out Briefing Paper #7 here:http://www.sais-cari.org/s/V4-Briefing-Paper-7-Montenegro-Case-Study-Dec-2021.pdf

CARI has released a new briefing paper on China's "hidden debt."

On September 29, 2021, AidData, a research lab at William & Mary, released a detailed overview of their new data on China’s global lending, “Banking on the Belt and Road.” The report has generated much commentary. In this briefing paper, CARI Director Deborah Brautigam and Yufan Huang examine the data underpinning the AidData conclusions. While they agree with many of AidData’s points, the authors’ own analysis of the data puts a very different spin on their headline conclusions. Brautigam and Huang argue that by providing averages, not discussing outliers, and allocating the entire Chinese loan for joint ventures to only the host government partner, the AidData report is unduly alarmist.

Check out the paper here:http://www.sais-cari.org/s/V5-FINAL-10-25-Briefing-Paper-6-Brautigam-and-Huang-AidData.pdf

Zambia's debt difficulties hit headlines in November 2020 when the country defaulted on its Eurobond payments. In August 2021 a new president, Hakainde Hichilema, took office, facing a debt burden that had never been fully transparent to Zambia’s public and the world.

In our new Policy Brief, CARI Director Deborah Brautigam analyzes how Chinese creditors, contractors, and Zambian stakeholders failed to take steps to make Zambia's borrowing sustainable. Curious why Zambia was a clear outlier, Dr. Brautigam explores the system for project development and loan approval in Zambia and China and offers concrete policy recommendations.

CARI's latest Policy Brief adapts the findings from last month's Working Paper on Zambia in a shorter format and offers insights oriented towards policymakers. Check out the new paper here:http://www.sais-cari.org/s/V2-PB61-Zambia-Tragedy-of-the-Commons-October-2021.pdf

Zambia's debt difficulties hit headlines in November 2020 when the country defaulted on its Eurobond payments. In August 2021 a new president, Hakainde Hichilema, took office, facing a debt burden that had never been made fully transparent to Zambia’s public or the world. Today, CARI is releasing two new papers that shed light on Zambia's Chinese debt predicament.

In Briefing Paper 5, "Zambia's Chinese Debt in the Pandemic Era," Deborah Brautigam and Yinxuan Wang use CARI data and research on loan disbursements and repayments to estimate Zambia’s outstanding external public debt to all Chinese financiers, official and commercial, at approximately US$6.6 billion. That is more than double the most commonly cited figure for Chinese debt in Zambia (US$3 billion).

In Working Paper 51, "How China and Zambia Co-Created a Debt 'Tragedy of the Commons'," Deborah Brautigam analyzes how Chinese creditors, contractors, and Zambian stakeholders failed to take steps to make Zambia's borrowing sustainable. Dr. Brautigam explores the project development and loan approval processes in Zambia and China to explain why Zambia is a clear outlier in terms of its Chinese debt burden.

Read the blog post: http://www.chinaafricarealstory.com/2021/09/zambias-chinese-debt-in-pandemic-era.html
Read the Briefing Paper:http://www.sais-cari.org/s/BP-5-Brautigam-Wang-Zambia-Chinese-Debt-Pandemic-Era.pdf
Read the Working Paper:http://www.sais-cari.org/s/WP-51-Brautigam-Zambia-Tragedy-of-the-Commons.pdf

Beijing has canceled interest-free loan debts due to mature by 2021 for 15 African countries, totaling at least $113.8 million. Find out more on our Debt Relief Dashboard (updated monthly):

Debt Relief — China Africa Research Initiative You can edit the text in this area, and change where the contact form on the right submits to, by entering edit mode using the modes on the bottom right. 

Don’t miss CARI’s latest set of publications: Henry Tugendhat and Julia Voo examine the impact of the Chinese “Digital Silk Road” policy initiative in Africa and its implications for the future of Internet governance, six years after its launch in 2015.

- Read the policy brief:http://www.sais-cari.org/s/PB-60-Tugendhat-and-Voo-China-Digital-Silk-Road-Africa.pdf
- Read the working paper:http://www.sais-cari.org/s/WP-50-Tugendhat-and-Voo-China-Digital-Silk-Road-Africa.pdf

Don’t miss CARI’s latest policy brief: based on the two cases provided by the Transnational Environmental Accountability Project (TEA Project), the 2020-2021 CARI SAIS-IDEV Practicum Team examines Chinese resource-backed infrastructure financing investments, by comparing governance in Guinea and Ghana.

Authors Qianrong Ding, Hayden Hubbard, Emily Larkin, and Dawalola Shonibare conclude that although resource-backed infrastructure agreements provide needed investment into Ghana and Guinea, the lack of transparency in these agreements has created serious environmental, social, and governance concerns.

Read the policy brief:http://www.sais-cari.org/s/PB-59-SAIS-IDEV-Practicum-Chinese-Resource-Backed-Infra-Comparison-Guinea-Ghana.pdf

Don’t miss CARI’s latest blog post!

In “The Road to Who Knows Where”, CARI Director and Alex Hardin explore “what one highway project in Cameroon can tell us about the complexities of Chinese lending in Africa”.

Read it here:

The Road to Who Knows Where: What one highway project in Cameroon can tell us about the complexities of Chinese lending in Africa This post is by CARI Director Deborah Brautigam and former CARI Research Assistant Alex Hardin. Alex is now an M&E Associate at Winrock Inte...

Don’t miss the latest updates to our CARI COVID debt relief dashboard!

The June figures are now up: Chinese lenders have provided at least $12.1 billion in debt relief in 2020 and 2021.

Find out more: http://www.sais-cari.org/debt-relief

Now up on the CARI blog, SAIS PhD Student Keyi Tang proposes a research idea using the SAIS-CARI China-Africa Loan Data and other databases: has Chinese lending improved the access to electricity for Africans?

We hope other researchers will take up this challenge!

Evaluating the Impact of China-Financed Power Projects on Electricity Access This guest blogpost is by SAIS PhD student Keyi Tang Photo credit: ZSM In the last decade, China has overtaken the World Bank and the Afric...

Don’t miss CARI’s latest set of publications: Zhengli Huang and Pritish Behuria examine projects financed by Indian and Chinese Exim Banks to analyze how the development financing of two ‘emerging’ donors has evolved in Ethiopia.

Learn more by reading “A Comparative Analysis: Chinese and Indian Exim Bank Finance in Ethiopia”:

- Read the policy brief:http://www.sais-cari.org/s/PB-58-Huang-Behuria-Comparative-Analysis-Chinese-Indian-Exim-Bank-Finance-Ethiopia.pdf
- Read the working paper:http://www.sais-cari.org/s/WP-49-Huang-Behuria-Comparative-Analysis-Chinese-Indian-Exim-Bank-Finance-Ethiopia.pdf

If you’ve missed any of our CARI 7th Annual Conference panels on “China’s Overseas Lending in Comparative Perspective”, you can catch up anytime on our website!

All of the recordings can be viewed on http://www.sais-cari.org/event-details/2021/4/6/cari2021conference

2021 Virtual Conference – "China's Overseas Lending in Comparative Perspective" — China Africa Research Initiative The 7th Annual China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) Conference will be held virtually from Tuesday, April 6 to Tuesday, May 18, 2021. This year’s theme is "China’s Overseas Lending in Comparative Perspective."