Chinese Loan Contracts

How China Lends Dataset, Version 2.0

Summary

This dataset contains information about 371 debt contracts between Chinese state-owned creditors and borrowers in 60 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries.

Official Citation

Gelpern, A., Horn, S., Morris, S., Parks, B., & Trebesch, C. (2023). How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments. Economic Policy 38 (114): 345-416.

Gelpern, A., Haddad, O., Horn, S., Kintzinger, P., Parks, B.C., & Trebesch, C. (2025). How China Lends 2.0: Introducing an extended dataset of 371 debt contracts. Williamsburg, VA: AidData at William & Mary.

Date Published

June 25, 2025

Full Description

This dataset contains information about the financial and non-financial characteristics of 371 debt contracts between 20 Chinese state-owned creditors and 155 borrowers in 60 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America, the Middle East, Europe, and Oceania. Its covers debt contracts over a thirty-six year period (1990-2025).

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 371 Chinese debt contracts by conducting a systematic review of public sources, including government registers and gazettes, parliamentary websites, repositories of legal acts, and debt information management systems in borrower countries. AidData has digitized each of the contracts and made them available through a searchable online repository.

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Related Publications

Working Paper

136

How China Collateralizes

Anna Gelpern, Omar Haddad, Sebastian Horn, Paulina Kintzinger, Bradley C. Parks, Christoph Trebesch

2025-06-25

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