Critics refer to this as "debt-trap diplomacy," in which China deliberately provides loans to countries it knows are unable to pay, with the hope of gaining political leverage.

Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu and Bruno Venditti use data from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission to show in the graphic below, the most heavily indebted countries by their total loans from China.

China's Massive Belt and Road Initiative

Much of China's loans are part of the country's wider investments in global infrastructure: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Launched in 2013 and also referred to as the New Silk Road, the BRI stands as one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived. Its goal is to create a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, highways, and streamlined border crossings.

In the process, Chinese state-owned creditors rapidly scaled up the provision of foreign currency-denominated loans to resource-rich countries, specially in Africa.