The Trump administration pointed to Hambantota to warn of China’s strategic use of debt: In 2018, former Vice President Mike Pence called it “ debt-trap diplomacy”-a phrase he used through the last days of the administration-and evidence of China’s military ambitions. Onerous terms and feeble revenues eventually pushed Sri Lanka into default, at which point Beijing demanded the port as collateral, forcing the Sri Lankan government to surrender control to a Chinese firm. As the story goes, Beijing pushed Sri Lanka into borrowing money from Chinese banks to pay for the project, which had no prospect of commercial success. The prime example of this is the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota. Once a country is weighed down by Chinese loans, like a hapless gambler who borrows from the Mafia, it is Beijing’s puppet and in danger of losing a limb. Seen this way, China’s internationalization-as laid out in programs such as the Belt and Road Initiative-is not simply a pursuit of geopolitical influence but also, in some tellings, a weapon. As states around the world pile on debt to combat the coronavirus pandemic and bolster flagging economies, fears of such possible seizures have o nly amplified. China, we are told, inveigles poorer countries into taking out loan after loan to build expensive infrastructure that they can’t afford and that will yield few benefits, all with the end goal of Beijing eventually taking control of these assets from its struggling borrowers.
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