What distinguishes china from a lot of other lenders is a lack of transparency. It doesn't really publish much in the way of official data on its own lending to other countries. A lot of the projects that china lends money for are not particlarly commercially violable. There are now signs that china is slowly changing its position, because these debt problems, especially developing world, are getting so acute and it's becoming clear that china cannot deal with them on its own.
After a five-month hiatus, violence has returned to the northern region of Tigray—but that is just one of the conflicts threatening to pull the country to pieces. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has made it a prominent developing-world lender. How will it deal with so many of its loans souring? And our obituaries editor reflects on Issey Miyake’s fashion-for-the-masses philosophy.
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