《南华早报》今天的文章：中国会不会引爆非洲债务的地雷？

Are Chinese infrastructure loans putting Africa on the debt-trap express?

Beijing has lent billions of dollars to countries on the continent to build railways, highways and airports but critics say the borrowings are unsustainable，

Chinese officials say the projects will pay off in the long run and host nations are well aware of their limits and needs.

When Clement Mouamba went to Beijing last year, he had two main tasks.

The prime minister of the Republic of Congo needed to find out exactly how much his country owed to China, a number the struggling, oil-rich central African nation had until then not been able to provide the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to qualify for a bailout. He also needed to convince Beijing to restructure its debt to ensure sustainability.

The IMF had put talks for further loans on hold until Mouamba’s administration could say exactly how much it had to repay to the country’s external creditors, including China – the republic’s single largest bilateral lender – and oil multinationals such as Glencore and Trafigura........, www.scmp.com