hah…
Only skimmed the paper so far – academic vs political commentary so interesting from an economics perspective.
Basically, the Chinese have lent to certain countries using opaque terms, other countries have more transparent terms. Generally based on their level of per capita income/level of development.
One interesting item is that China was concerned about how certain countries would use the funds and was loathe to distribute funds directly. Instead they would distribute to Chinese companies. Other items was that the level of debt is probably understated and that financial institutions should re-evaluate the credit worthiness of developing country debt.

Maybe distributing $Ts of funds to countries with high corruption is better than $Ts in fighting in Iraq and Afganistan. On the other hand, you might just trade western type corruption/waste in Africa for Chinese type corruption/waste. Wouldn’t surprise me if Chinese investment ends up being as useless as western investment in Africa.