'It's almost free money': Chinese banks offer cheap loans abroad
State policy lenders providing funds to risky regimes at low interest rates
As the cash squeeze claims victims across the mainland - from a bailout-seeking shipyard to a solar-panel maker missing a bond payment - there are places where Chinese money remains cheap and plentiful. Like Nigeria.
That lending in turn generates overseas contracts to build airports, roads and shopping centres for state-owned Chinese firms that are mired in debt.
"As opportunities go down and risks go up at home, these policy banks have gained a lot of power, and they want to sustain themselves," said Kevin Gallagher, the author of the 2010 book The Dragon in the Room, about Chinese investment in Latin America.
"The majority of the countries that are getting the finance are countries with bond spreads that are through the roof."
CDB, with a loan book more than three times the size of the World Bank's, and China Eximbank are wholly owned by the state with a mandate to support foreign policy.
Officials from the lenders accompany the nation's leaders across the globe dispensing funds to forge ties from Costa Rica to Russia, helping secure supplies of oil, gas and minerals and creating work for some of China's biggest state-owned enterprises.