The difference between the IMF and Chinese loans is that the IMF is a lender of last resort, whereas China's loans are for greenfield projects to country that are in perfectly fine financial situations.

The Chinese loans are attractive to leaders of countries because it allows them to advertise huge development projects, which are in many cases unsustainable and fiscally destructive, while pocketing most of the money, and letting the actual negative impacts, which show up a few years later, be dealt with by a future administration and the citizens of the country.

A closer analogy to the Chinese loans are World Bank loans, and while they have strict requirements, they've not really ever led to countries facing these massive debts, even though countries have been borrowing from the World Bank for far longer than from China.