Belt and Road Bailout Lending Reaches Record Levels (study from 2023)

Middle-income countries, which represent 80 percent, or more than USD 500 billion of China’s total overseas lending, pose major balance sheet risks, so Chinese banks have incentives to keep them afloat via bailouts. Low-income countries, which represent only 20 percent of China’s total overseas lending, are less important to the health of the Chinese banking sector and rarely get bailed out.

"Beijing is ultimately trying to rescue its own banks. That’s why it has gotten into the risky business of international bailout lending,” said Carmen Reinhart, one of the study’s authors […]

Whereas a typical rescue loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) carries a 2 percent interest rate, the average interest rate attached to a Chinese rescue loan is 5 percent.

The study also highlights another controversial issue: whether central banks may be using (unreported) PBOC swap line drawings to artificially inflate their headline foreign exchange reserve numbers. If a borrower can use PBOC swap line drawings to repay dollar- and euro-denominated debts, then such drawings may be especially useful during a balance of payments or debt crisis. However, if a borrower can only use the RMB liquidity from its PBOC swap line as “window dressing” to bolster gross foreign exchange reserves, then its net reserve position and ability to service dollar- and euro-denominated debt remains unchanged. “Much more research is needed to measure the impacts of China’s rescue loans—in particular, the large swap lines administered by the PBOC,” said Brad Parks.

“Beijing has created a new global system for cross-border rescue lending, but it has done so in an opaque and uncoordinated way,” said Parks. “Its strictly bilateral approach has made it more difficult to coordinate the activities of all major emergency lenders, which is concerning because sovereign debt crisis resolution usually requires some level of inter-creditor coordination.”