Jamie Linsley-Parrish at JSTOR Daily:
In 2017, strategic studies scholar Brahma Chellaney accused China of using “debt-trap diplomacy” in its lending activities with African countries: in other words, buying significant quantities of debt to increase political leverage in the region. The accusation was leapt upon in the United States, with then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson claiming Chinese complicity in “miring nations in debt and undercutting their sovereignty.” Sixteen US senators and Tillerson’s successor, Mike Pompeo, subsequently used the term to decry Chinese “corruption” through such lending. But are such claims justified, or are they borne from anxiety around China’s rise to become a superpower and the subsequent implications for the West?
More here.