Kerry: There's almost like a stratification of borrowers, right? So you get the like the good business borrowers where it just very clearly is about business for these Chinese firms. And then you get a second underbelly of borrowers where they are kept permanently indebted. Places like Pakistan, Djibouti. The motivations are becoming much, much clearer and much more fragmented.
The Belt and Road initiative to encircle much of the world with Chinese-funded, Chinese-built infrastructure is growing leaner and more penny-wise. But its ambitions are undimmed. Energy-market turmoil has given a boost to the green transition—a boost that has come with hard truths about the shift’s costs. And a television show about Jesus Christ becomes an unlikely hit.
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