[Salon] China has lent more to US than any other country since 2000, report finds

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

China has lent more to US than any other country since 2000, report finds

China’s lending has been ‘vastly’ larger – and far more skewed towards developed countries – than previously assumed, AidData study finds

SCMP

Ralph Jennings

21 Nov 2025

China’s lending since the turn of the century has been “vastly” larger than previously understood, with loans and grants increasingly going to developed countries including the United States – the largest recipient – according to a new report by an American university research team.

Of the US$2.2 trillion disbursed by China’s “official sector” between 2000 and 2023, nearly US$202 billion went to projects in the US, the AidData research lab at Virginia-based university William & Mary found.

“Our data demonstrate that the US – a high-income country – is the single largest recipient of official sector credit from China. This finding is both unexpected and counterintuitive,” wrote researchers of the study released on Tuesday.

“This is an extraordinary discovery, given that the US has spent the better part of the last decade warning other countries of the dangers of accumulating significant debt exposure to China, and accusing China of practising ‘debt trap diplomacy’,” said Brad Parks, AidData’s executive director.

The study – which was compiled over 36 months using more than 246,000 sources – defined a wide range of institutions as official Chinese lenders and donors, including state policy banks, state-owned commercial banks, state-owned companies, state-owned funds, and the central bank and its subsidiaries.

Some of the Chinese lending to projects in the US involved the construction of “critical infrastructure” or helped Chinese companies acquire “critical technologies” from American companies, according to the report.

China helped bankroll the construction of major liquefied natural gas pipelines in Rio Grande, Port Arthur and Freeport, the Dakota Access oil pipeline, several natural gas pipelines, an electric power transmission line feeding New York City, data centres in Virginia, and airport terminals in New York and California, among other projects, the report found.

Official Chinese lenders also financed the acquisition of hi-tech companies in the US and provided liquidity support – via working capital and revolving credit facilities – to a wide array of Fortune 500 companies, it added.

One example of a Chinese transaction in the US that involved the acquisition of “strategically important hi-tech companies and assets” was a US$800 million loan that enabled a consortium of Chinese firms to buy 100 per cent of US-listed image sensor maker OmniVision Technologies in 2015, AidData noted.

However, the research lab added that many Chinese loans to the US “are guided by the pursuit of profit rather than the pursuit of geopolitical or geoeconomic advantage”.

While China has become known for lending to countries across the Global South via its Belt and Road Initiative, the report found that 10 of the 20 largest destinations for official sector credit from China between 2000 and 2023 were high-income countries, including the United Kingdom, Singapore, Germany and Switzerland.

Several of those countries – including Russia, Venezuela and Argentina – were classified as high-income by World Bank standards at some point during that period, qualifying them for that status under the parameters of the study.

Russia was the second largest recipient after the US, with a cumulative US$171.78 billion in loans and grants over the period, followed by Australia with a total of US$130 billion.

Overall, China’s total overseas lending portfolio is two to four times larger than previously published estimates, making China the world’s biggest official creditor, according to AidData.

China’s official lending goes far beyond the Belt and Road Initiative – a 12-year-old effort to build trade-related infrastructure around the world, partly through concessional project financing – a finding that could raise “concern” about whether the US and its allies were capable of keeping up, AidData said.

But Beijing has also “dramatically reduced the share of its portfolio that supports low-income and lower-middle-income countries” over time, while “rapidly ramping up the share that supports upper-middle-income and high-income countries”, according to the report.

In 2000, the first year covered by the study, 88 per cent of China’s portfolio went to low-income countries, AidData said. By the final year, 2023, the figure had dropped to just 24 per cent. Meanwhile, the proportion of financing going to developed countries rose from 12 per cent in 2000 to 76 per cent in 2023.

China offers debt, equity and grants in “flexible, innovative and complementary ways to advance its geostrategic and commercial interests”, the report said. The country wants to be seen as an “international creditor of first – and last – resort”, co-author Brooke Escobar added in a report summary.

The AidData team – which consisted of 16 full-time researchers and 126 part-time researchers – found that China had approved loans and grants for more than 30,000 “projects and activities” worldwide over the time period. A total of 9,764 of those projects and activities were in high-income countries.

For every dollar the US donates or lends to developing countries, China gives US$1.5 through its overseas development assistance budget, which typically runs to around US$5.7 billion per year, according to the study.

Ralph Jennings

Ralph Jennings joined the Political Economy desk as a Senior Reporter in August 2022 having worked as a freelancer since 2011. Ralph previously covered news for Thomson Reuters in Taipei and for local newspapers in California. He graduated from University of California,