How China Lends

A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments

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Silk Road Diplomacy
Deconstructing Beijing's toolkit to influence South and Central Asia
Influencing the Narrative
How the Chinese government mobilizes students and media to burnish its image
Explore Beijing’s Public Diplomacy
Quantifying the Chinese government’s reach and influence
Mapping China's Global Investments and Inequality
Geocoded Chinese development projects and the diffusion of economic activity in developing countries
China's Global Development Footprint
By the Numbers: The clearest look yet at Chinese official finance worldwide

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Featured Publications

How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments

Anna Gelpern, Sebastian Horn, Scott Morris, Brad Parks, Christoph Trebesch

2021-03-31

Working Paper
104

Project Aid and Firm Performance

Silvia Marchesi, Tania Masi, Saumik Paul

2021-02-22

Journal Article

Is Favoritism a Threat to Chinese Aid Effectiveness? A Subnational Analysis of Chinese Development Projects

World Development

Axel Dreher, Andreas Fuchs, Roland Hodler, Bradley C. Parks, Paul A. Raschky, Michael J. Tierney

2021-01-06

Note: A version of this article was previously published as an AidData Working Paper.  

Bargaining with Beijing: A Tale of Two Borrowers

Alysha Gardner, Joyce Lin, Scott Morris, Bradley Parks

2020-11-18

Update: This note was revised in February 2021. The original version, published in November 2020, is available here.

Journal Article

Pulling the purse strings: Are there sectoral differences in political preferencing of Chinese aid to Africa?

PLOS One

Carrie B. Dolan, Kaci Kennedy McDade

2020-04-22

Policy Report

Silk Road Diplomacy: Deconstructing Beijing's toolkit to influence South and Central Asia

Samantha Custer, Tanya Sethi, Jonathan A. Solis, Joyce Jiahui Lin, Siddhartha Ghose, Anubhav Gupta, Rodney Knight, Austin Baehr

2019-12-10

In the News

Bloomberg Opinion

China and Its Lenders Have to Join the Global Club

May 9, 2021

Quartz Africa

Secret contracts show how China structures loans to become Africa’s “preferred” lender

April 9, 2021

The China Africa Project

How China Lends: A Landmark Report on Chinese Loan Contracts

April 7, 2021

Le Monde

La Chine a fait de la dette un instrument au service de sa puissance

April 7, 2021

Nikkei Asia

China's secret loan contracts reveal clout over developing nations

April 1, 2021

Bloomberg

Chinese Contracts Could Complicate Sovereign Debt Restructuring

March 31, 2021

The First Tranche

July 2021

China rises sharply in influence among developing-country leaders, but does not yet surpass the US and G7 countries, according to new report

A survey of nearly 7,000 leaders by AidData finds an increasingly contested development cooperation field.

South Africa's Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a bilateral meeting on Feb 19th, 2017. Photo by the Government of South Africa via Flickr, licensed under (CC BY-ND 2.0).
March 2021

New study shines a light on Beijing’s secretive international lending program

An unprecedented cache of documents shows that Chinese loan contracts have unusual secrecy provisions, collateral requirements, and debt renegotiation restrictions.

October 2020

AidData wins two-year Ford Foundation grant to close the evidence gap on China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Ford Foundation grants AidData $200,000 to examine Chinese development finance.

Ebola Response workers stand outside the Chinese Ebola treatment unit (ETU) in Monrovia, Liberia, during a ceremony as Liberia's last Ebola patient was released on 5 March 2015
August 2020

Chinese infrastructure investments shift economic activity, reduce spatial inequalities, finds new paper

The paper shows that Chinese projects relocate economic activity from city centers to peripheries.

Urael station of Addis Ababa’s Chinese-financed light rail. Photo by Nebyu derseh tenaw, licensed under (CC BY-SA 4.0).
March 2020

Powerful lessons for global development

How much foreign direct investment are China and Russia putting into low- and middle-income countries? How much of China’s foreign aid supports their own strategic economic development? These are just some of the questions students are helping to answer at AidData.

December 2019

Beijing's public diplomacy spending in South and Central Asia quantified and evaluated

AidData, a research lab at William & Mary, today released new data and analysis capturing the results of the Chinese government's strategic public diplomacy efforts in 13 countries.

The leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) take part in a photo session before the 2019 SCO summit. Photo from the Office of the President of Russia, in the public domain.

Recent Datasets

Chinese loan contracts

How China Lends Dataset, Version 1.0

Published

2021-03-31

This dataset contains information about 100 loan contracts between Chinese state-owned entities and government borrowers in 24 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Oceania.

Chinese Public Diplomacy Activities

China’s Public Diplomacy in South and Central Asia, Version 1.0

Published

2020-10-19

This dataset provides an initial quantitative look into China’s public diplomacy activities in the South and Central Asia region between 2000-2018, as featured in the Silk Road Diplomacy report.

Chinese Public Diplomacy Activities

China’s Public Diplomacy Dashboard Dataset, Version 1.0

Published

2019-12-09

This dataset is composed of first-of-its-kind quantitative data—on China’s public diplomacy efforts from two of AidData’s reports, Ties That Bind and Influencing the Narrative—that is available through AidData’s China’s Public Diplomacy Dashboard.

Geocoded China Data

AidData's Geocoded Global Chinese Official Finance, Version 1.1.1

Published

2018-09-11

This dataset geolocates Chinese Government-financed projects that were implemented between 2000-2014. It captures 3,485 projects worth $273.6 billion in total official financing. The dataset includes both Chinese aid and non-concessional official financing.

Chinese Public Diplomacy Activities

China’s Public Diplomacy in East Asia and Pacific, Version 1.0

Published

2018-06-27

This dataset provides an initial quantitative look into China’s public diplomacy activities in the East Asia and Pacific region between 2000-2016, as featured in the Ties That Bind report.

Global China Data

AidData's Global Chinese Official Finance Dataset, 2000-2014, Version 1.0

Published

2017-10-11

This dataset tracks the known universe of overseas Chinese official finance between 2000-2014, capturing 4,373 records totaling $354.4 billion. The data includes both Chinese aid and non-concessional official financing. For geolocated data on Chinese project locations, see AidData's Geocoded Global Chinese Official Finance Dataset, Version 1.1.1.

Related Events

How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments
April 16, 2021
Ties That Bind
August 1, 2018
Influencing the Narrative
February 11, 2020
Silk Road Diplomacy
December 9, 2019