As an addition: There are many excellent studies illustrating how China leverages its foreign investments across the globe exclusively to its own benefit at the cost of regional economies and their peoples.

As one study from 2023, China as an International Lender of Last Resort (pdf), states,

China’s rescue loans differ from those of established international lenders of last resort in that they (i) are opaque, (ii) carry relatively high interest rates, and (iii) are almost exclusively targeted to debtors of China’s Belt and Road Initiative … Chinese rescue lending is extended at relatively high interest rates. The [U.S.] Fed usually charges margins of around 25 basis points over the LIBOR reference rate. In contrast, the PBOC swap lines show interest rates at margins between 200 and 400 basis points above the Shibor reference rate, while the typical rescue loan by Chinese banks requires interest rates of 5 percent … These rates are also considerably higher than the average IMF interest rate, which has been around 2 percent for non-concessional lending operations over the past 10 years …

In a more recent investigation, researchers showed how China uses collateralizes (pdf) to achieve its goals that. As the study says, Beijing’s practices,

raise new concerns about debt transparency, fiscal management, fiscal autonomy, and the quality of macroeconomic surveillance, particularly in commodity-exporting EMDEs [emerging market and developing economies] … lending to EMDEs by Chinese creditors documents a heavy reliance on collateral unrelated to the stated purpose of the debt: loans secured by commodity revenues are not designed to generate more of these revenue … l lenders can manage subordination risk with so-called “negative pledge” clauses in their contracts, which usually require the debtor to forswear secured borrowing … Chinese lenders’ apparent preference for quasi-collateral means that their security interests are rarely recorded in public registries or collateral filing systems … These factors, combined with confidentiality clauses preventing disclosure, raise asymmetric information problems among creditors …

Both studies complement a strong body of research regarding China’s malign lending practice which show similar patterns across all countries, including, of course, Africa.