Just in case any one here still does not know about the true story of Hambantota port amidst the crowd of misinformation by the MSM, please keep this info for your future reference!
The truth about Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port, Chinese ‘debt traps’ and ‘asset seizures’
When critics of Beijing accuse the government of debt traps and other predatory policies, the example that crops up is almost always that of the Chinese-built
Hambantota International Port in Sri Lanka.
The government of Sri Lanka, a country where Chinese firms have also financed and constructed railways, roads and power stations, allegedly failed to repay Chinese loans to build the port and was then forced to lease it to China, which covets the port as a naval base.
It is part of
an oft-told tale that China provides infrastructure loans to developing countries, often as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, knowing they cannot be repaid, allowing China to seize borrowing states’ valuable assets.
US consultants the Rhodium Group recently released a study into Chinese asset seizures and found just one instance: the above-mentioned
Hambantota port.
However, interviews we have done in Sri Lanka show that
even this lone instance is NOT REMOTELY TRUE.
The Hambantota port lease was *NOT* a result of any inability to service the loans, nor was it a debt-for-equity swap — the Sri Lankan government still owns the port. And funds received for the lease were not used to repay port-related debt, but to pay off MORE EXPENSIVE LOANS, generally to Western entities.
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