When China launched its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, it was billed as a visionary infrastructure campaign designed to connect Asia, Africa, and Europe with ports, railways, and roads. Supporters claimed it would spark economic development across the Global South. But as Edouard Prisse explains in We Are Funding China’s Growth That Must Stop!, the BRI is not a humanitarian effort. It is a calculated power play, financed by trade surpluses with the West and aimed at building global dependence on Beijing.
Chapter 2 of Prisse’s book outlines how the BRI works in practice. Countries are offered large-scale loans for projects they often cannot afford—ports, highways, and industrial zones. These projects are typically managed and constructed by Chinese firms, with materials sourced from China, ensuring the money returns home quickly. But when these ventures fail to generate the expected revenue, debtor nations are left struggling to pay the bill. That’s when the trap is sprung.
Take Sri Lanka. Between 2010 and 2015, the Chinese government funded the construction of the Hambantota Port, a grand infrastructure project in a region with little shipping traffic. As Prisse details, the port failed to turn a profit. When Sri Lanka struggled to make loan payments, China offered refinancing—at higher interest rates. Eventually, the Sri Lankan government was forced to lease the port to China for 99 years. A strategic coastal asset was effectively surrendered, not through war or diplomacy, but through debt.
A similar pattern has emerged in Pakistan. China has invested billions in energy plants, rail links, and the Gwadar Port. Much of the financing is opaque, but the repayment burdens are already mounting. Prisse cites reports indicating that over $385 billion in Belt and Road loans are not transparently disclosed. That’s not accidental. It’s part of a system designed to obscure the true cost of Chinese generosity.
These examples are not isolated mistakes. They reveal a repeatable strategy: offer loans that appear beneficial, trap countries in debt, then demand concessions—strategic assets, political loyalty, or silence on human rights issues. In this way, China extends its influence into fragile regions without firing a shot. And all of this is made possible by the trade surplus China holds with the West.
As Prisse emphasizes, Western consumers help fund these global power grabs every time they buy cheap Chinese goods. The trade imbalance with the U.S. alone provides China with hundreds of billions of dollars annually. That liquidity doesn’t just keep China’s internal economy afloat—it fuels its foreign expansion.
Ironically, the same Western nations that donate aid to debt-stricken countries like Sri Lanka also buy the goods that give China the money to entrap them in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle. And it won’t stop until free trade with China ends.
Prisse argues that the Belt and Road Initiative is not about roads or ports. It is about leverage. Infrastructure is just the delivery system. What China really builds is obligation. And that obligation, once entrenched, becomes influence. Strategic, economic, and political.
The port in Sri Lanka is not just a cautionary tale—it’s a warning. Every dollar spent on Chinese imports helps build the next one.
