I'm of two minds on this.

ON THE ONE HAND this is exactly what you would expect from a country failing to escape the middle income trap, a nation staring down crashing demographics and a standard of living rising above their ability to employ themselves as the workshop of the world, a nation turning away from market reform and back towards the familiar totalitarianism that recognizes Han Chinese as humans, other Chinese as less-than-humans and non-Chinese as animals. A country that has a two thousand year history of "pay us tribute so that all may know our place in the heavens" and a steadfast, monastic refusal to embrace the market reforms its global counterparts presumed it would eventually adopt through pure osmosis. One Belt One Road was obviously and completely a trap, a bad economic deal intended to foreclose on the farmland and ports of the developing world.

ON THE OTHER HAND it's exactly what the World Bank has been doing since 1944.

Countries in AP’s analysis had as much as 50% of their foreign loans from China and most were devoting more than a third of government revenue to paying off foreign debt.

lol who the fuck do you think owns the rest of it

Ferreal this is the grinder the West has been stuffing everyone else into since the Dutch East India Company and pretending otherwise is shameless potkettling. "No no you can't genocide the indigenous people anymore we're done with it." "No no you can't poison the atmosphere anymore we're done with it." "No no you can't economically enshackle the developing world we're... well, not done with it so much as better at it than you." You can't even google "world bank debt" or "world bank debt ownership" or "who owes how much to the world bank" without seeing a bunch of shit about China. The Whataboutism on this one is strong, and I say that as a direct beneficiary of it. I mean, which VC firm basically made Argentina bankrupt because they could? Fuckin' Elliott Capital. At least when the Chinese do it they are ostensibly doing it as a country rather than a bunch of rich dipshits with predatory spreadsheets.