This dataset contains information about China's portfolio of collateralized loans to borrowing institutions in low-income and middle-income countries that qualify as public and publicly-guaranteed (PPG) debt. It covers loan commitments over a twenty-two year period (2000-2021) and provides 27 new variables that measure (1) sources and types of collateral; (2) cross-collateralization and cash collateral pooling; and (3) the use of escrow accounts, including the minimum cash balances that borrowers commit to maintain in the accounts and the actual cash holdings that borrowers maintain over time.
When currency swap borrowings are excluded, the dataset captures 620 PPG loan commitments worth $418 billion in constant 2021 USD for approved, active, and completed projects and activities from 31 Chinese state-owned creditors to 158 borrowers in 57 low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2021. The dataset does not capture suspended and cancelled loan commitments; projects and activities that Chinese state-owned creditors agreed in principle to finance but never resulted in formal loan commitments; or so-called “umbrella” agreements (such as master framework agreements) that sought to finance multiple projects and activities via subsidiary loans.
To construct the dataset, the research team first identified all collateralized PPG loan commitments in the 3.0 version of AidData’s Global Chinese Development Finance (GCDF) dataset. It then used AidData’s Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF) methodology to identify sources that document the collateralization arrangements of individual borrowings. In total, the research team drew upon more than 12,000 sources to build the dataset, including the annual reports, financial statements, stock exchange filings, and bond prospectuses of borrowing institutions; IMF Article IV reports and World Bank-IMF debt sustainability analyses (DSAs); loan agreements, account agreements, mortgage agreements, share pledge agreements, account charge agreements, assignment of receivables agreements, deeds of security, and deeds of covenant; and official correspondence between lenders and borrowers; and media reports.
