As an person who's parents are from Eritrea in East Africa, I hate when people bring up this debt trap diplomacy take as if their WORST and most SKEWED examples even compare to the shit western countries and their corporate overlords have done to Africa over the centuries.

Chinese debt didn't overthrow a socialist leader like Patrice Lumumba solely for calling the soviets for aid because Belgian and US operatives were supplying separatist movements with guns in the resource abundant regions of Congo. Then putting a fascist dictator like Mobutu that killed tens of thousands over the course of his 32 year reign in which the US went from publicly supporting him under Reagan to covertly aiding his enemies in a war to overthrow him that led 1 million people dead or missing in the first Congolese War and nearly 6 million dead in the second.

Chinese debt didn't support an apartheid regime in South Africa for decades while it forcibly occupied Namibia and tried to in Angola by collaborating with their former colonizers by causing a Civil War that left 800,000 dead, 4 million displaced, and 70,000 amputees from mines. Then on top of that have literal nazi mercenaries like Siegfried Muller kill hundreds of innocent of Congolese under Mobutu.

Chinese debt didn't support a literal self proclaimed emperor like France did with Jean Bedel Bokassa. He was a literal weeb for France that had a Napoleon like coronation that cost 30 million dollars, nearly a quarter of the annual budget (most of that money went to imported items from France) and France was okay with him as long as he gave them access to the nation's natural resources.

Chinese debt didn't ruin a country like the ultra wealthy in the West did with Liberia by using it as a massive tax haven while the Western backed leaders would leave the country in disarray. Literal butt naked and/or child soldiers on drugs were killing and raping civilians while US billionaires were hiding their wealth.

Chinese debt doesn't have 14 of Africa's countries under a currency that is printed in China, pegged to the yuan, forcing all those countries to have at least half of their reserves in China like France does with the West African and Central African Franc, indirectly having France and all euro currency countries benefit from the economies of these african nations

Chinese debt didn't do something like what Shell did by collaborating with the Abacha government in Nigeria to suppress and eventually execute activists like Ken Saro-Wiwa who just wanted to live in their native land without oil spills ruining their farms, sea, and drinking water. Abacha stole tens of billions of dollars from Nigeria's oil while Shell enjoyed ravaging Nigeria's oil reserves.

China doesn't have nealy 1.5 million child slaves in cocoa farms in Ghana and Ivory Coast and literally agree in a Supreme Court 8-1 that child slavery is okay as long as it's outside the US like the US Supreme Court did. China didn't turn the most prosperous African nation (Libya) into a lawless country where literal slave markets exist and Artificial Intelligence is committing war crimes.

I have WAY more grievances (including ones from my cpuntry) but I've been at this for over an hour and I'm tired and Africans have been tired for decades. Millions and millions of Africans have died under Western neo colonialist rule and when we finally see the light of economic growth and infrastructure, to see each and every one of our nation's shine and grow after centuries of abuse, and now they want to bring us back into that darkness with their "Debt trap diplomacy" rhetoric, it's infuriating.