This emerging analysis sheds light on how China’s economic statecraft in the early phase of its globalisation influenced lending practices, and how these processes and institutional constraints for Chinese lenders have shaped contract design. It also draws out implications for how contracts are implemented and enforced, with an emphasis on the institutional and relational context in which these contracts exist.

For creditors, our analysis also highlights a further structural challenge for China in its approach to lending contracts and negotiations. We show an emergent and evolutionary process, rather than coordination, in how China’s lending and contracting has developed – but China is increasingly called upon to provide systemic responses in debt relief initiatives.