There is no debt trap emanating from China into the Belt and Road Initiative nations. It turns out that it is in the “developed” countries, and decisively so—where, notably, such as the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pronounce that America can easily afford to throw another $100 billion in new debt into global war.
IMF reporting figures make clear that the “advanced” nations are hogging all the debt issuance. There have been since 2019 two periods of dramatic increase in total global debt, driven largely by sovereign, or government ("public") debt. In the first of those periods, from the last quarter of 2019 through the first quarter of 2021, the “developed” nations accounted for 90% of the new net debt. Following a brief pause, the second spike in total debt, from the fourth quarter of 2022 through the second quarter of 2023 (as far as IMF figures go), the “advanced sector” issued close to 85% of the new debt.
