Chinese loan contracts

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. In order to facilitate benchmarking, it also provides information about 142 loan contracts from 28 additional (commercial, bilateral, and multilateral) creditors. The benchmark contracts are from Cameroon, one of the very few countries in which the government has published all of its debt contracts with international creditors of all types. The dataset captures the financial characteristics (e.g. principal, interest, currency, maturity, amortization schedule, collateral, guarantees) and non-financial characteristics (e.g. seniority, confidentiality, events of default, termination and cancellation rights, governing law, and sovereign immunity) of each loan contract.

The contracts were identified through a multi-year data collection initiative overseen by AidData, a research lab at William and Mary. AidData’s team of faculty, staff, and research assistants retrieved electronic copies of 100 Chinese loan contracts (not summaries or excerpts of the contracts) by conducting a systematic review of public sources, including the debt information management systems, official registers, and parliamentary websites of more than 200 countries. AidData has digitized each of the contracts and made them available through a searchable online repository.

The authors of the How China Lends study employed two independent research teams—one at the Georgetown University Law Center and another at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy—to apply a consistent set of variable definitions and coding rules and procedures to the loan contracts. More information on the definitions of the 100+ variables and the coding rules and procedures can be found in Appendix IV of the How China Lends report, contained in the dataset download.