Across the main frontier and emerging‑market crises since mid‑2022, China has been an important creditor but not the primary or “more often than not” external savior that Friedberg predicted, and recent data show Beijing is actually pivoting away from distressed low‑income borrowers.

Key crisis cases after mid‑2022

• Sri Lanka (sovereign default and economic collapse)

  • In 2022, India, not China, was the main emergency lifeline, providing about $4 billion in credit lines, swaps, and aid for fuel, food, and medicine, making India the top lender during the crisis year. (outlookindia.com)
  • Sri Lanka’s stabilization has been anchored by a $2.9 billion IMF program and a restructuring deal with a broad group of official creditors (India, Japan, France, etc.), with China one important but slow‑moving bilateral creditor rather than the clear lead “savior.” (reuters.com)
  • Multiple reports describe China as dragging its feet on debt relief, forcing others and the IMF to work around it, which is the opposite of being the primary supporter. (indiandefensenews.in)

• Pakistan (2022‑25 economic crisis)

  • Pakistan avoided default via an IMF $3 billion standby program in 2023 and a follow‑on $7 billion program in 2024, with a large, parallel World Bank package and additional support from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. (apnews.com)
  • China has repeatedly rolled over and refinanced several billion dollars of loans (e.g., a $2 billion rollover in 2024 and $3.4 billion in 2025), which are critical but complementary to IMF and multilateral support, not a stand‑alone rescue replacing them. (reuters.com)
  • Overall, Pakistan’s stabilization rests on IMF conditional lending plus multilateral and Gulf funding, with China acting as a key bilateral creditor among several, not as a singular “savior.” (reuters.com)

• Zambia and Ghana (debt distress under the G20 Common Framework)

  • Both countries’ recoveries have been structured around IMF programs (Zambia’s $1.3 billion ECF; Ghana’s $3 billion ECF) and comprehensive restructurings with multiple official creditors and bondholders. (wsj.com)
  • China is a major creditor and co‑chairs Ghana’s official creditor committee with France, but World Bank and IMF officials have repeatedly criticized Chinese reluctance and delays in taking losses, which slowed restructurings in Zambia, Ghana, and others. (mofep.gov.gh)
  • Zambia’s finance minister has publicly said the era of “too much debt from China is over,” underscoring that Lusaka is reducing its reliance on Chinese financing rather than China emerging as its main long‑term savior. (wsj.com)

• Laos and other BRI‑heavy frontier states

  • Laos, heavily indebted to China for rail, energy and other BRI projects, is now in severe debt distress. Analysts note that without a clear, generous debt‑reduction deal from China—considered unlikely—Laos’ crisis is expected to persist, and think tanks explicitly recommend IMF‑led restructuring instead. (cnbc.com)
  • Similar patterns of debt stress and slow or limited Chinese relief appear in other BRI borrowers, prompting calls for broader multilateral solutions rather than dependence on Beijing alone. (afronomicslaw.org)

Macro‑level evidence on China’s role

• Studies of China’s rescue lending up to 2021 show that Beijing did become a sizeable “lender of last resort” to some BRI countries (about $240 billion of bailouts to 22 countries, roughly 40% of IMF rescue lending in the late 2010s). (ifw-kiel.de)

  • But these data mostly stop before Friedberg’s mid‑2022 prediction window. Since then, the structural trend has shifted.

• Post‑2022 shift away from distressed frontier markets

  • A 2025 AidData‑based analysis finds that by 2023 more than 75% of China’s overseas lending was going to upper‑middle and high‑income countries, while the share going to low‑income countries fell from 88% in 2000 to just 12% in 2023. (reuters.com)
  • Researchers and media reports note that Beijing has deliberately cut back BRI infrastructure lending in the Global South and shifted to financing critical infrastructure and high‑tech assets in richer economies like the US and EU—contrary to the idea that it is doubling down as a primary savior of fragile frontier markets. (theguardian.com)

• Meanwhile, the IMF has reinforced its central role in crisis management, even revising its policies so it can keep lending when bilateral creditors such as China have not yet agreed to restructuring—explicitly to avoid Chinese‑related delays derailing programs in countries like Zambia, Ethiopia, and Sri Lanka. (reuters.com)

Overall assessment

Friedberg’s claim was that in the years after mid‑2022, China would typically emerge as the primary external financial and political supporter of destabilized frontier and emerging markets, especially where it had infrastructure investments.

The record to late 2025 shows instead that:

• In the marquee crises he was implicitly talking about (Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Zambia, Ghana, Laos), China is a major but often reluctant or secondary actor alongside (and sometimes behind) the IMF, World Bank, regional powers like India, and G20 creditor coalitions. (outlookindia.com)
• China has not generally supplanted those institutions as the primary savior; in several cases it has been criticized for slowing relief. (axios.com)
• New data show a structural pivot of Chinese overseas lending toward wealthier countries and away from precisely the low‑income, highly distressed frontier economies the prediction was about. (reuters.com)

Given these outcomes, the central directional claim of the prediction—that China would more often than not be the primary external savior and supporter of destabilized frontier/emerging markets after mid‑2022—has not materialized. The prediction is therefore best classified as wrong.