When China Lends to the Rich: Is Beijing Rewriting the Rules of Global Finance?

As the world’s largest official creditor, China’s global lending extends far beyond the widely perceived image of financing infrastructure in developing countries. According to new research by AidData, Chinese official sector institutions provided nearly 1 trillion US dollars in loans and grants to high-income countries between 2000 and 2023. This amounted to nearly 45% of the total value of Chinese lending and grants worldwide in this period. In addition to providing corporate loans in advanced economies, Chinese state-owned banks have financed infrastructure projects there and increasingly supported Chinese companies in acquiring foreign firms. This acquisition financing has increasingly focused on sensitive sectors, whose share rose from 46% in 2015, when Made in China 2025 was launched, to 88% in 2023. 

What drives China’s growing financial engagement in advanced economies? What opportunities does Chinese state-backed finance create for businesses and strategically important sectors in advanced economies? Can increasing involvement of Chinese financing create new economic dependencies and geopolitical risks? How are Western governments adapting their own financing policies in response to China? Is Beijing effectively reshaping the rules of global finance?

Program

The event consists of two impulse lectures followed by a discussion.  

The Global China Conversation #51 will be held in English.

Bradley Parks

Dr. Bradley Parks is the Executive Director of AidData, a research lab at William & Mary. He leads a team of 40 economists, political scientists, computational geographers, software engineers, program evaluators, policy analysts, and media and communications professionals who work with governments and international organizations to improve the ways in which overseas investments are targeted, monitored, and evaluated. He is the author of three books, including Banking on Beijing: The Aims and Impacts of China’s Overseas Development Program (Cambridge University Press). Dr. Parks is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), where he works on issues related to Chinese lending practices and the future of the Belt and Road Initiative. His policy publications with AidData, CGD, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy include How China Lends, How China Collateralizes, Bargaining with Beijing, Belt and Road Reboot, Chasing China, Banking on the Belt and Road, Hidden Debt Exposure to China, Power Playbook, and Is Beijing a Predatory Lender? His work is regularly featured in print and broadcast media, including the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg, Le Monde, CNN, NPR, and the BBC. 

Jörg Wuttke is a Partner with the DGA Group/ Albright Stonebridge Group since August 2024 and is based in the Washington DC. Until July 2024 Mr. Wuttke was Vice President of BASF China for 27 years. He was President of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China from 2007 to 2010, 2014 to 2017 and again from 2019 to 2023. From 2001 to 2004 Mr. Wuttke was the Chairman of the German Chamber of Commerce in China. He joined the Robert Bosch supervisory board in 2023. Since its establishment in 2013, Mr. Wuttke is member of the Advisory Board of Germany’s foremost Think Tank on China, Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), in Berlin. He lived in China for more than 35 years.