The thing is, such deals are generally meant to make it cheaper to move resources from the host country to China while moving goods in, and the currency used to ink the deal is almost always the worthless dollar.
So they're a way to transform something useless (dollar) into draining resources which consequently leads to real industrial improvement.
Even if the projects don't give China sovereign control over the areas, that's not the original intention anyways. It is a way to offload unreliable currency to countries who can't say no, with the end result being both US (they get critical goods from China) and China (they get resources to grow the industrial sector) winning, but the 3rd country ends up losing big time by having to sponsor Chinese industrial expansion in exchange for currency that isn't very useful.
