ZPresident Xi Jinping could go on the offensive at the end of the week: the Chinese head of state is expected to make a fundamental speech at the 29th Pacific Rim Economic Summit (APEC) in Bangkok. So far, the series of Asian summits over the past few days, culminating in the G-20 conference of leading industrialized and emerging countries in Bali, Indonesia, which is ending this Wednesday, has gone differently than Beijing had hoped: the democracies have made up ground.
Especially when it comes to the relief of highly indebted countries, which is so important for Asia and Africa, China is isolated at the G-20 summit. Paragraph 33 of the final declaration has been supplemented with a dry footnote – something that diplomats who negotiate such papers for weeks and aim for agreement hate. The only comment in the paper is that one Member State has a different view of things.
In their paragraph, in view of the overlapping world crises, the remaining 19 states call on “all willing and able countries” to “make further commitments in order to achieve the global goal of $100 billion in voluntary contributions for the countries most in need”. The dissenter, on the other hand, emphasizes in the footnote that he is concerned with involving multilateral donors – these include institutions such as the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which are largely American and Japanese. It’s an open secret in Bali that Beijing is hiding behind the unnamed dissenter.
China’s murky role as a sponsor of infrastructure
In recent decades, the Chinese have become one of the largest donors in Africa and Asia. By promoting infrastructure there, they secure their own jobs, the sale of industrial goods, the use of the yuan and a lasting influence. But how much money the People’s Republic has in the fire is a well-kept secret.
“Typically, China is extremely reticent about the details of its overseas development financing. Without such data, it is difficult to make any concrete statements about the validity of the debt trap argument,” criticizes Darren Cheong of the Singapore think tank Iseas. However, he comes to the conclusion that in Southeast Asia for every dollar of aid from Beijing, there is a debt of 5 dollars – which leads to enormous dependence. Globally, the ratio is as high as 1 to 9.
This is one of the reasons why all governments around the world are following the fate of Sri Lanka with the utmost attention. When the island, which had largely depended on Beijing’s cash flow under the Rajapaksa family, collapsed economically in the spring, there was no help from China. Debt rescheduling failed, as did fast food aid. In contrast, China’s adversary India, off whose southern tip the strategically important island lies, has so far transferred more than 4 billion dollars in emergency aid.
