![Journalists watch the live broadcast of the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on September 15, for a Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) summit. i[Alexander Nemenov/AFP]](/cnmi_st/images/2022/10/05/37614-000_32jf4ey-739_416.webp)
WASHINGTON -- As the world's largest official creditor, China has a responsibility to prevent a new international debt crisis sparked by Russia's war in Ukraine, a top US official said.
Developing and emerging markets were already experiencing difficulty at the start of the year, after a 2% fall in their collective outputs following the COVID-19 pandemic, Brent Neiman, a counselor to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, said September 20 at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC.
"Governments, appropriately, borrowed and spent to weather the shock and fight back against the disease," he said, according to a Treasury Department statement. "Their debt levels jumped from 54% of GDP before COVID to 64% by the end of last year."
"And then, at this time of great vulnerability, Russia unleashed its brutal and unjustified war against Ukraine," Neiman said. "The war has caused food and energy prices to jump and accelerated inflation around the world."
These conditions will without a doubt cause "debt distress" in several countries, he said.
He gave the example of Sri Lanka, which is undergoing a major political and economic crisis due in part to Chinese loans and infrastructure projects gone awry.
The lessons learned in Sri Lanka provide a cautionary tale for borrowers of Chinese loans and recipients of Chinese infrastructure projects -- particularly those associated with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as One Belt, One Road (OBOR), analysts warn.
Despite being the largest bilateral official creditor in the world, China has delayed or failed to participate in multinational efforts to alleviate borrowing loads, Neiman said.
"China's enormous scale as a lender means its participation is essential," he stressed.
"A recent study estimates that as many as 44 countries now owe debt equivalent to more than 10% of their GDP to Chinese lenders," he said.
Estimates of the total of outstanding Chinese official loans -- while uncertain from a lack of transparency -- range from roughly $500 billion to $1 trillion.
"Failure to act on these debts could imply years of ongoing difficulties with the servicing of debts and with underinvestment and lower growth in low and middle income countries," Neiman said.
Neiman called on Beijing to end the "enormous delays" in participating in the international efforts to provide relief.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have made similar pleas, so far to no avail.
Hidden debts
When asked about Neiman's remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin punted the blame.
"In recent years, the increasing debt of developing countries has mainly come from Western commercial creditors and multilateral institutions, and developing countries' long-term debt payments have mainly flowed to Western commercial creditors and multilateral institutions," he said, according to Reuters.
China became the world's largest official creditor in 2017, surpassing the World Bank and the IMF, according to a report published in the Journal of International Economics last November.
Researchers highlighted the significance of these "hidden debts" to macroeconomic stability.
"The Chinese government does not report on its official international lending and does not publish any data on outstanding overseas debt claims," they said, adding that "50% of China's official lending to developing countries is not reported in the most widely used official debt statistics."
The countries most in debt to China are primarily located in Africa but are also in Central Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, according to the World Bank.
Analysts point to the BRI as a major source of debt to China for participating countries.
Of the 97 countries participating for which data were available in 2020, those with the highest external debt to China were all involved in the BRI, Forbes and Statista reported in August.
Pakistan, for example, had $77.3 billion of external debt to China, followed by Angola ($36.3 billion), Ethiopia ($7.9 billion), Kenya ($7.4 billion) and Sri Lanka with $6.8 billion in Chinese-held debt.
Djibouti -- a major hub for the BRI and home to one of China's few military bases abroad -- has the biggest external debt burden to China as a percentage of gross national income, at 43%.
For other countries borrowing from china and maintaining any close relationship with China is a matter of shame and embarrassment. Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Council could not assent to the request to discuss the Uighur issue in China. Most countries that voted against this draft either owe money to China or have close trade relations with it. Most of them are African and Asian nations. The interesting thing is that some Muslim countries also voted against this draft. On Thursday, Qatar, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan, along with 15 other United Nations Human Rights Council members, rejected the request to discuss China's violation of Muslims' rights in this council. Pakistan and Indonesia are debtors to China, and the UAE and Qatar have close trade relations with China. They ignored the oppression of their Muslim brothers in Xinjiang for their little interests and accepted the humiliation of this world and the afterlife. This demonstrates how costly the relationship with China is, and any association with this insidious and bloodthirsty country is humiliating.
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So what? China's official policy is to push countries into debt and bankrupt them. How do you expect this country to handle the global debt crisis? China carefully chooses the countries it wants to chase, and then examines that country's overall economic, political, social, and cultural situation. Furthermore, after China secured that the country could be a good hunt, it establishes relations with it. At first, China treats these countries amicably and generously so that every country and every politician thinks that China wants to assist them from the depths of its heart. After China gained the trust of that country, it slowly reveals its true color. And until the debtor country finds out, China drowns it in its debts. How can such a hypocritical and insidious country will solve the world's debt crisis while it is one of the causes of its occurrence?
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Vladimir Putin, who controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, pledged last week to use “all the powers and means at our disposal” to defend Russia. The United States, he said, had set “a precedent” when it dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.It was Putin’s latest thinly veiled nuclear threat to Ukraine and its Western allies since he sent Russian troops into the neighbouring country more than seven months ago. But will the Russian leader use nuclear weapons? What would be the impact of such a move? And how might the US respond? As tensions ratchet up, here are key questions answered. Russia is the world’s biggest nuclear power based on the number of nuclear warheads. It has an estimated 5,977 while the US has 5,428, according to the Federation of American Scientists. The above text includes words of the world's craziest beast (Putin) who cares neither his people nor other world citizens. By this message, i would like to ask through salaam times from the world leaders to put pressure on Putin to stop his satanic thinkinking and avoid from using such destructive weapons. Besides, I would ask the international community especially the United States, Russia, China and other wild beasts to destroy their nuclear weapons before they use it. Even if the crazy dog (Putin) will not use his nuclear bombs now, someone else would do it tomorrow. For this reason, I would ask all the nuclear owner countries to destroy theirs. fuck you putin
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