The State Department is launching a new initiative aimed at persuading impoverished countries to avoid going into debt to China by accepting infrastructure funds they can’t pay back.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is trying to carry out a “treasury-run empire build,” as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put it recently. Pompeo, like his predecessor Rex Tillerson, has taken high-profile opportunities to warn that the Communist power’s many offers of loans for infrastructure projects, such as ports near valuable shipping lanes, can lead to neighbors losing control over those facilities when they struggle to repay the debt.