The debt is real.
> US$300 billion was estimated to have been financed via public and publicly guaranteed debt.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3093218/b...
> US$300 billion was estimated to have been financed via public and publicly guaranteed debt.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3093218/b...
It would be different if the payments had been conditional on doing whatever the Chinese government wants, but most of the lending up to 2016 was made with little oversight (which is why the sum is so high) and only after several high-profile project failures (e.g. the port of Hambantota, where after a debt-for-equity swap, a Chinese consortium is stuck operating it to try recoup the construction costs), the criteria for issuing new loans were made more strict, similar to those of other institutions like the World Bank.
The bitter lesson for the Chinese development finance industry is that "publicly guaranteed debt" is not very guaranteed when a new government comes to power every few years and wants to renegotiate the terms of agreements made with the previous government.
"Laos set to cede majority control of its national power grid to China to service Belt and Road debts"
https://asiatimes.com/2020/09/laos-the-latest-china-debt-tra...
As an analogy, consider a bank giving someone a loan to build a house. In case of default, they'll repossess the house to recoup some of the amount.
Does this mean it's a good idea for a bank to give huge loans to people who they know won't be able to pay it back, so that they'll get the house? Obviously not! Repossession only avoids losing the full amount of the loan; the bank is still making a loss overall.
Laos ceding majority ownership of the power grid to the Chinese company that built it only means that the infrastructure investment isn't as profitable as expected (otherwise they could just use the profits to service the loan) and they're cutting their losses.
"We're more than happy to provide the necessary grid updates, but we're going to need to see some reciprocation, maybe sign that military base lease we asked for?"
They could've made the exact same demand the first time, but what they actually did was more like
"We're more than happy to provide the necessary grid updates, just pay the money back later, okay?"
And then Laos decided to renegotiate the agreement instead...
In the second situation, they can say no to the money and be no worse off.