In 2020, China’s non-financial direct investment in countries along the Belt and Road reached US $17.79 billion, up more than 18 per cent year-on-year.
From 2014 to 2020, China’s total non-financial direct investment in other countries along the Belt and Road reached US $104.72 billion, with the annual average hitting US$14.96 billion.
The ratio of China’s outbound direct investment (ODI) in other countries along the BRI routes also increased to more than 16 per cent of the country’s total ODI in 2020, from less than 10 per cent in 2013 when the BRI was first proposed.
No participating economy that undertook BRI-related construction projects has slipped into a debt crisis. Credit for that should go to the Chinese government’s three principles relating to the joint projects: First, China does not force any country to join the BRI, nor does China force any participating country to borrow money from it.

Second, all the investment projects are to be carried out by independent companies, as per the existing market rules, and thus government-to-government lending is rare, and based on market mechanisms like international market financing and private-public partnership financing. Third, all the BRI projects are development-oriented to ensure good returns on investment. But, some critics are quick to cite the case of the Hambantota Port project in Sri Lanka. Not long ago, a senior Sri Lankan government official went on record saying that the country’s debt to China constitutes just 12 per cent of Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt. As for the Hambantota Port project, China Merchants Group purely followed market rules to pick up a 70 per cent stake, and to receive the nearby area on a 99-year lease to build an industrial park, based on the principles of fair trade. This is actually the best way to pre-empt a debt crisis.

In 2017, 26 BRI-related countries signed an agreement with China on the “guiding principles of Belt and Road finance.” In 2019, the “Belt and Road Debt Sustainability Framework” was published by China’s Ministry of Finance, providing clear guidelines about the processes and standards of debt sustainability analysis, debt risk analysis, debt capacity pressure test, debt risk management, and so on, for the countries concerned.
Countries that were unable to repay debt at maturity found that China had never made things more difficult for them, but instead actively explored win-win resolutions.
For instance, last year, the Chinese government waived off interest-free loans offered to some African countries, when the loans matured in 2020. To ease the debt burden on developing countries caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, China actively responded to the G20 debt relief initiative, becoming the most generous country among G20 member countries.