Pakistan is the World’s Most Indebted Country to China

What we’re showing

The top 20 countries ranked by their amount of Chinese debt. These figures are as of 2022 and come from the World Bank (accessed via Yahoo Finance).

Could China be in trouble?

China has provided developing countries with over $1.1 trillion in loans through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but this lending spree could be an issue in the future.

According to a 2023 report by AidData, 80% of these loans involve countries in financial distress, raising concerns about whether these nations will ever be able to repay their debts.

While China claims the BRI is a driver of global development, critics in the West have long warned that the BRI employs “debt trap diplomacy”, a tactic where one country uses loans to gain influence over another.