China Uses the Pandemic to Squeeze BRI Borrowers

China's BRI Borrower Squeeze

The new episode of our coronavirus crisis podcast features Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. We spoke with Steil about his discovery and investigation of a recent move by China to partially sidestep a moratorium on debt service from to its borrowers under the Belt and Road Initiative (or BRI) — a move that sets it in stark opposition to other G-20 members and which has so far received almost no media attention.