Hussein Askary, Vice-Chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden (BRIX) and economic and strategic analyst, presented this new groundbreaking method of investigating and debunking the “Chinese debt-trap” narrative to a class of the School of International Relations at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS) in China recently.
It is based on 6 years of research into case studies like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia, and Montenegro. This is a useful tool for serious researchers and journalists to examine the case of any country, using this three-step method to discover if the alleged “China debt-trap” applies to the country being examined.
What is important in exposing this false narrative, is not simply to show the truth, but also it has implications for how a sound credit policy for the next ten years of building the Belt and Road Initiative could be formed, what new sources of finance can be generated, and what to build with the new financial resources. This will be discussed in the next parts of this lecture.