Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

There Is $385 Billion in ‘Hidden Debt’ From China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Study Finds

Thursday, September 30, 2021

Categories: ASCF News Economic Security

Comments: 0

Source: https://www.barrons.com/articles/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-hidden-debt-51632922403

The Haifa Port—Israel's largest—is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative. Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg

There is some $385 billion in “hidden debt” across lower- and middle-income countries from China’s sweeping global infrastructure development initiative, a study has found.

Lending linked to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), one of President Xi Jinping’s trademark foreign policy projects, has been systematically underreported for years, research published by AidData showed Wednesday. AidData is an international development research laboratory based at The College of William & Mary, in Virginia.

The BRI, launched in 2013, is a Chinese strategy to finance transport, energy, telecommunications, and urban development projects across the world. The initiative covers the likes of hydro power in Pakistan, railways in Nigeria, and Israel’s largest port.

Including China, there are 139 countries involved in the initiative, making up 40% of the global economy, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Research from AidData shows that, since 2013, Chinese overseas lending has shifted away from sovereign borrowers toward state-owned companies and banks, joint ventures, and the private sector. As a result, these debts don’t typically appear on government balance sheets, though they are explicitly or implicitly covered by state liability protection.

This has blurred the distinction between private and public debt and created “major public financial management challenges for developing countries,” AidData found, with Chinese debt burdens being far higher than what credit agencies had understood.

“China has quickly established itself as the financier of first resort for many low-income and middle-income countries, but its international lending and grant-giving activities remain shrouded in secrecy,” said Ammar A. Malik, a senior researcher at AidData, in a statement.

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