'Debt-trap diplomacy' thesis more myth than reality: Experts

The Belt and Road Initiative is not aimed at global hegemony, argued David Dodwell, the executive director of the Hong Kong-APEC Trade Policy Study Group trade policy think tank, in his op-ed in the South China Morning Post on Sunday.

There have been persistent attacks on the Belt and Road Initiative, with repeated claims of "debt-trap" diplomacy, Dodwell added.

However, as Deborah Brautigam and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins and the China-Africa Research Initiative in the US have clearly shown in their examination of many BRI projects, the "Chinese debt-trap" thesis does not stand up to scrutiny. She has provided numerous examples of Chinese willingness to renegotiate financing terms, and to provide debt relief and write-offs.

Pradumna Rana at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University and Ji Xianbai at Renmin University in Beijing have, in a recent book surveying 26 Belt and Road Initiative participants, confirmed Johns Hopkins' conclusion: 41.6 percent of survey respondents believed the Belt and Road Initiative was of net benefit to their countries. They find "the debt-trap diplomacy thesis is more a myth than a reality".

"The reality is that the need for new investment in infrastructure is as huge and as urgent as ever," said David Dodwell, who believed the Belt and Road Initiative was started out of China's critical (and growing) reliance on food, oil and minerals.

As the Chinese looked increasingly outward, strengthening trade and economic links with the world, protecting their supply chains and facilitating access to urgently-needed commodities, the need to encourage infrastructure-building internationally became obvious, he said.