https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/business/china-loans-coronavirus-belt-road.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes
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2.新闻来源︰
New York Times
3.新闻内容︰
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Poor Countries Borrowed Billions from China. They Can’t Pay It Back.
Nations want Beijing to forgive or renegotiate loans as their economies
suffer. Doing so would be costly. Saying no could hurt China’s global image.
By Maria Abi-Habib and Keith Bradsher
May 18, 2020
As the coronavirus spread around the globe, Pakistan’s foreign minister
called his counterpart in Beijing last month with an urgent request: The
country’s economy was nose-diving, and the government needed to restructure
billions of dollars of Chinese loans.
Similar requests have come flooding in to Beijing from Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka
and a number of African nations, asking to restructure, delay repayments or
forgive tens of billions of dollars of loans coming due this year.
With each request, China’s drive to become the developing world’s biggest
banker is backfiring. Over the last two decades it unleashed a global lending
spree, showering countries with hundreds of billions of dollars, in an effort
to expand its influence and become a political and economic superpower.
Borrowers put up ports, mines and other crown jewels as collateral.
Now, as the world economy reels, countries are increasingly telling Beijing
they can’t pay the money back.
China faces difficult choices. If it restructures or forgives these loans,
that could strain its financial system and infuriate the Chinese people, who
are suffering under their own slowdown. But if China demands repayment when
many countries are already angry with Beijing over its handling of the
pandemic, its quest for global clout could be at risk.
“China is politically on the back foot,” said Andrew Small, senior fellow
at the German Marshall Fund. Should China foreclose on those loans, he added,
“they would be taking over strategic assets in countries that now can’t
afford to feed their people.”
China’s global reputation is on the line. Countries are openly questioning
its role in the coronavirus outbreak, after Chinese officials in January
initially downplayed the severity and contagiousness of the disease. Beijing
is selling and donating masks and equipment to help its battered image. A
misstep could deal its global ambitions a major setback.
At the same time, the financial stakes are huge. The Kiel Institute, a German
research group, pegs China’s lending to the developing world at $520 billion
or more, with the vast majority doled out in the last few years. That makes
Beijing a bigger lender than the World Bank or the International Monetary
Fund.
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