隨著中國收緊“一帶一路”，非洲國家正在修補和湊合 (2/2)

Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:

African nations mend and make do as China tightens Belt and Road (2/2)

Sun., November 21, 2021, 10:12 p.m.

By Duncan Miriri

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MALAYSIA TO BOLIVIA

Zhou Yuyuan, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for West Asian and African Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said the COVID-19 crisis had strained Chinese lending institutions and African finances alike.

In future, he added, Beijing was likely to encourage more corporate Chinese investment in the continent, to fill the role of state-backed financing. "Once the pandemic is over, Africa's economy is likely to recover," he said. "That could drive China's corporate investment."

The pandemic has added to the obstacles facing President Xi's self-described "project of the century". After peaking at $125.25 billion in 2015, Chinese investments into BRI nations have dropped every year, apart from 2018, when they edged up 6.7%, the Green BRI data showed.

In 2018, Pakistan https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-silkroad-railway-insight-idUSKCN1MA028 balked at the cost and the financing terms of building a railway. The previous year, there were signs of growing problems for BRI, after China's push in Sri Lanka https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-china-insight-idUSKBN15G5UT sparked protests.

AidData, a research lab at the College of William and Mary in the United States, said in a study https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-belt-road-plans-losing-momentum-opposition-debt-mount-study-2021-09-29 at the end of September that $11.58 billion in projects in Malaysia had been cancelled over 2013-2021, with nearly $1.5 billion cancelled in Kazakhstan and more than a $1 billion in Bolivia.

"A growing number of policymakers in low and middle-income countries are mothballing high-profile BRI projects because of overpricing, corruption and debt sustainability concerns," said Brad Parks, one of the study's authors.

China's foreign ministry said in response to the AidData report that "not all debts are unsustainable", adding that since its launch the BRI had "consistently upheld principles of shared consultation, shared contributions and shared benefits".

 'RESOURCES ARE FINITE'

A key problem is debt sustainability.

Copper producer Zambia became Africa's first pandemic-era sovereign default last year after failing to keep up with payments on more than $12 billion of international debt, for example. A recent study suggested more than half of that burden is owed to Chinese public and private lenders.

In late 2018, Beijing agreed to restructure billions of dollars in debt owed by Ethiopia.

Some African governments are also growing more reluctant to take out loans backed commodities such as oil and metals [sic].

"We can't mortgage our oil," Uganda's works and transport minister Katumba Wamala told Reuters, confirming the country had refused to pledge untapped oil in fields in the west to secure the railway loan.

The finance squeeze means African governments must make more strategic investment decisions in terms of debt sustainability, said Yvette Babb, a Netherlands-based fixed income portfolio manager at William Blair.

"There is no infinite amount of capital," she said.

($1 = 110.2500 Kenyan shillings)

(Additional reporting by Joe Bavier in Johannesburg, Elias Biryabarema in Kampala, Kevin Yao and Ella Cao in Beijing; Editing by Katharine Houreld, Karin Stohecker and Pravin Char)

Translation

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由馬來西亞到玻利維亞

上海國際問題研究院西亞非洲研究中心高級研究員Zhou Yuyuan表示，COVID-19危機使中國的貸款機構和非洲的財政都吃緊了。

他補充說，未來北京可能會鼓勵更多的中國企業在非洲大陸投資，以發揮國家支持融資的作用。他說: “一旦大流行結束，非洲的經濟很可能會復蘇”; “這可能會推動中國的企業投資” 。

這場大流行病毒增加了習主席自稱的“世紀工程”所面臨的障礙。綠色 BRI 數據顯示，在 2015 年達到 1252.5 億美元的峰值後，中國對 BRI 國家的投資每年都在下降，除了 2018 年小幅增長 6.7%。

2018 年，巴基斯坦 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-silkroad-railway-insight-idUSKCN1MA028 對修建鐵路的成本和融資條款猶豫不決。之前一年，中國在斯里蘭卡的推展行動 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-china-insight-idUSKBN15G5UT 引發抗議，之後 “一帶一路” 倡議出現了日益嚴重的問題。

美國威廉瑪麗學院研究實驗室 AidData 在9 月底發表一項研究中表示 https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-belt-road-plans-losing-momentum-opposition-debt -mount-study-2021-09-29，馬來西亞在 2013-2021 年取消了 115.8 億美元的項目，哈薩克斯坦取消了近 15 億美元，玻利維亞取消了超過 10 億美元。

該研究的作者之一Brad Parks說：“由於定價過高、腐敗和債務可持續性問題，中低收入國家越來越多政策制定者, 正在擱置高調的一帶一路項目” 。

中國外交部在回應 AidData 報告時表示，“並非所有債務都是不可持續的” 。並補充說，“一帶一路”倡議啟動以來，“始終堅持共商、共建、共享的原則”。

 '資源是有限的'

一個關鍵問題是債務的可持續性。

例如，銅生產國贊比亞去年未能跟上超過 120 億美元的國際債務的支付，成為非洲第一個病毒大流行時期的主權違約。最近的一項研究表明，一半以上的負擔是由中國公共和私人貸款機構承擔的。

2018 年底，北京同意重組埃塞俄比亞所欠的數十億美元債務。

一些非洲政府也越來越不願意用石油和金屬等商品支持貸款。

“我們不能抵押我們的石油”, 烏干達的工程和交通部長 Katumba Wamala 告訴路透社，證實該國拒絕抵押西部油田的未開發石油以確保鐵路貸款。

在William Blair駐荷蘭的固定收益投資組合經理Yvette Babb表示，金融緊縮意味著非洲各國政府必須在債務可持續性方面做出更具戰略性的投資決策。

她說:“資本是不會無限”。

       So, about China's overseas investment projects, there is definitely a rebalancing from the China side. On top of the damage wrought to both China and its creditors by COVID-19, analysts and academics attribute the slowdown in the projects to factors such as a waning appetite in Beijing for large foreign investments, a commodity price crash that has complicated African debt servicing, plus some borrowers' reluctance to enter lending deals backed by their natural resources.