The Financial Times reports China is now a bigger presence in international development finance than all of the world’s six major multilateral financial institutions put together, a new study by Boston University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found. Two Chinese policy banks — the China Development Bank (CDB) and the Export-Import Bank of China — had outstanding loans to overseas borrowers amounting to an estimated $684bn at the end of last year, just short of the $700bn owed to the six western-backed multilateral development institutions. In addition, China has in recent years set up two new multilateral development banks — the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank — and at least 13 regional funds.