Chinese overseas lending / MYS
Malaysia: debt owed to China
In 2021, Malaysia is estimated to have owed China $7.15bn, equal to 1.9% of its GDP, which ranks it 20 of 126 borrowers in the panel by dollars owed. The estimated stock peaked at $7.15bn in 2021. Of the 2021 total, $1.03bn is a drawn People’s Bank of China swap-line balance, a central-bank liability rather than a loan to the government.
The estimated stock, 2000 to 2021
The largest single-year move in the estimated stock is 2018, when it rose by $1.77bn.
Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending. Selection: estimated stock owed to China by Malaysia, by year and instrument, 2000 to 2021. Zeros are estimated zeros (no known loans outstanding), not missing values. Methodology
Historical loan records from the 2021 release
These records come from the 2021 HRT Mendeley replication release, not the November 2025 refreshed stock panel charted above. The refresh uses the updated Franz, Horn, Parks, Reinhart and Trebesch methodology, so this table cannot be reconciled to the chart. The earlier release marks 1 loan-level records for Malaysia as part of its debt-estimate sample, spanning 2007 to 2007. Comparable commitments are available for 1 of those loans and sum to $800m. These are gross commitments, not outstanding debt stocks. The stock methodology applies disbursement and amortisation profiles, with imputation where loan terms are missing, so the commitment sum must not be compared with the stock above. See the methodology. Terms are sparse by source: interest rate appears on 1 loans, grace period on 0, maturity on 1, any of the three on 1, and all three together on 0. The earlier file also carries 9 additional project rows for Malaysia outside that sample, so they are not included in this table.
| Year | Project | Commitment, USD | Commitment, source currency | Terms | Creditor | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | EXIM Bank preferential buyer's credit for Penang Second Crossing Bridge Project ID: MYS_3 · Source: AidData | $800m | USD 800,000,000 | rate 3% | grace n/a | maturity 20y | China Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) State-owned policy bank | Loan Concessional · borrower SPV |
Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending (2021 Mendeley replication loan file). Selection: 2021 replication loan records mapped to Malaysia and flagged DebtEstimateSample = 1 in that release. This is an earlier source universe, not the records used for the November 2025 refreshed stock panel. CommitmentUSD is a gross commitment flow and is not comparable to the charted stock. Commitment stays in its source currency, and ProjectDescription is rendered as free-text data from the file. Methodology
Against what Malaysia reports owing to all creditors
No comparison is possible. Malaysia has no row in the World Bank International Debt Statistics table. There is no reported all-creditor stock to measure the China estimate against, so the ratio is n/a, not zero and not a hundred percent. This is a difference in the scope of the two datasets, not evidence of anything hidden. The two-sources page lists every borrower in this position.
People’s Bank of China swap drawings
Malaysia carried a drawn swap balance in 2 years of the panel, peaking at $1.10bn. A drawing is a liability to another central bank, and it is not netted out of a headline gross reserves figure.
| Year | Drawn balance | Share of the year’s China total |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $1.10bn | 16.2% |
| 2021 | $1.03bn | 14.4% |
Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending. Selection: every year in which Malaysia carried a drawn PBoC swap-line balance above zero. Methodology
The same balance measured against gross international reserves, for every country that has drawn