AidData's Executive Director Bradley Parks shared findings from AidData's research on China's overseas lending portfolio, "Tracking the Cross-Border Lending Activities of the World's Largest Official Creditor," as part of the International Finance and Macroeconomics Data Session at NBER's 2024 Summer Institute.

China is now the world’s largest official creditor, but it does not participate in the OECD’s Creditor Reporting System (CRS). China recently began reporting to the BIS on the cross-border lending activities of its banks, but the data are not made public on a bilateral basis, nor are data made available at the individual loan level. Bottom-up data collection from the World Bank’s Debtor Reporting System (DRS) exists, but with very limited creditor coverage, debtor coverage, and debt instrument coverage. AidData is now working to systematically measure:

1. Official sector* loan and grant commitments from China to low-income countries (LICs) and middle-income countries (MICs)
2. Official sector loan and grant commitments from China to high-income countries (HICs)
3. Terms and conditions in China’s official sector lending contracts with borrowers in LICs, MICs, and HICs
4. Restructurings, haircuts, and financial returns (for China’s official sector lending to PPG borrowers in LICs and MICs)

For more, see the presentation slides.