Comments by "Peter Jacobsen" (@pjacobsen1000) on "10 years of China’s Belt and Road" video.

  1. I am not in the camp of people who see the BRI as a 'debt trap'. But that does not mean BRI has been a success. Rather, it is my feeling that many recipients of BRI loans/projects have thought "Let's get the money now, then we'll worry about how to pay them back some other day". But that also means that Chinese creditors (esp. China Exim Bank) have perhaps not always done their due diligence. Some of these loans seem a bit risky. In my opinion, the failure of the Sri Lanka Hambantota Port can be laid squarely on the shoulders of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, perhaps the most corrupt president ever. He is the one who decided to make a large port in Hambantota, a small town with no industry to speak of. The port was not needed, not in the right place, and not particularly useful, but it did happen to be in Mahinda Rajapaksa's small hometown. There are accusations within Sri Lanka that during his presidency, Mahinda Rajapaksa managed to defraud the country of more than $5 billion and funnel it out of the country. Many officials of his administration are being investigated for graft, fraud and corruption.
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  2.  @siamcharm7904  You say low rates. I have read that most loans are considered commercial loans with rates similar to what you see inside China: Around 6%. This is especially the case with loans from Exim Bank.
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