The DOI matches its Crossref record; 3 of the 3 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A critical look at Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’: the rise of a meme
Abstract
In 2017, a meme was born in a think tank in northern India: Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’. This meme quickly spread through the media, intelligence circles and Western governments. Within 12 months it generated nearly 2 million search results on Google in 0.52 seconds and was beginning to solidify into a deep historical truth. Stories can contain truths and falsehoods. Human emotions, including negativity bias, prime us to think in certain ways. This paper retells a series of stories about China’s international involvement, including in Angola, Djibouti, Sri Lanka and Venezuela, that challenge the media’s spin. It concludes with some suggestions about the relationship between academia and the media and policy worlds, and the need for scholars to speak ‘truth’ to ‘power’.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The dragon's gift: the real story of China in Africa
(2010) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.48-0383 · Cited by 1,613
Inclusive globalization: unpacking China's Belt and Road Initiative
Liu, W., & Dunford, M. (2016) · Area Development and Policy · doi:10.1080/23792949.2016.1232598 · Cited by 441
Localizing Chinese Enterprises in Africa: from Myths to PoliciesPreprint
Sautman, B., & Yan, H. (2015) · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · Cited by 74
Cited by
How China lends: a rare look into 100 debt contracts with foreign governments
Gelpern, A., Horn, S., Morris, S., Parks, B., & Trebesch, C. (2024) · Economic Policy · doi:10.1093/epolic/eiac054 · Cited by 322
Debt Relief with Chinese Characteristics
Acker, K., Brautigam, D., & Huang, Y. (2020) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3745021 · Cited by 95
Self-citationClash of Empires: From 'Chimerica' to the 'New Cold War'
Hung, H.-F. (2022) · doi:10.1017/9781108895897 · Cited by 75
What does the state do in China’s state-led infrastructure financialisation?
Liu, I. T., & Dixon, A. D. (2022) · Journal of Economic Geography · doi:10.1093/jeg/lbac009 · Cited by 49
From ‘debt diplomacy’ to donorship? China’s changing role in global development
Carmody, P., Zajontz, T., & Reboredo, R. (2022) · Global Political Economy · doi:10.1332/uzhw7185 · Cited by 23
Metadata
- Authors
- Brautigam, D.
- Venue
- Area Development and Policy
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2019-12-06
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1-14
- ISSN
- 2379-2949 (ISSN-L)
- 2379-2957
- OpenAlex
- W2992750391
- Cited by
- 522
- References
- 3
- FWCI
- 133.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A critical look at Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’: the rise of a meme. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/23792949.2019.1689828
- The paper
- Brautigam, D. (2020). A critical look at Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’: the rise of a meme. Area Development and Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/23792949.2019.1689828
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
