Secretary Pompeo struck an unusual chord with his comments on the International Monetary Fund paying money to Pakistan. What said was the funds should not be authorized to pay Chinese bond holders or China itself. Apparently, the new government of Pakistan needs some $12 Billion in loans to get going. The US doesn't want that money to go to China, and you can't really blame them. China seems to make loans easily so it maintains economic leverage over countries that take the offers. They reduce their risk by helping countries get alternative loans to pay back that money. We have to wonder how far this goes, and how much debt some of these countries have accumulated. Forbes says the same model used in Pakistan was used previously in Sri Lanka, resulting in China's acquisition of another big port to settle part of it.
Forbes says the Pakistan debt to GDP was 67.30% in 2017:
Pakistan accumulated a government debt equivalent to 67.20% of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2017. The country’s government debt to GDP averaged 69.30% from 1994 until 2017, reaching an all-time high of 87.90% in 2001 and a record low of 56.40% in 2007.
If Pakistan can't pay that debt, they could just default on it, but China would make that difficult. They could trade for satisfaction of some of it. How nice of China to allow that.
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