I’ve worked with a number of companies in SEA who deal with these kinds of infrastructure projects, and there is quite widespread concern that China’s intention is just to set up a series of debt-traps that it can leverage to achieve further strategic goals. The terms China tends to seek in these deals are also quite predatory. There’s little doubt who’s benefitting the most out of them, especially considering the ways China aggressively minimises their own downsides. This is a topic that has been written on quite extensively, and is likely the primary reason that Japan is outperforming China in SEA infrastructure investments.
If any of these countries do start to struggle paying back this debt, I’m sure there will be some bureaucrat stressing over it in his office in Beijing. That tends to be how the accountability model works in central planning committees. But China is acting a lot like a loan shark in most of these deals, and any default just means they get to exert their influence in other strategically meaningful ways.
It’s also very easy to see how all of this makes perfect sense to China. A lot of their internal mega-projects are starting to flop. Deals like this keep parts of their constructing industry busy, while transferring all the risk to ill-prepared developing nations.