Why are you so sure about that?
I can tell in a second that a random girl hitting on me with pics of money and crypto on her Instagram profile wants to scam me, thousands are not getting it even after they sent money and are not getting a dime back and they still try to message her to meet her in real life!
How many have fallen for the Akon city project? How many really believed the Volcano city in Salvador will be built with 500 million?
It's the same here, maybe they've believed it could be done, maybe they believed it would be profitable, maybe they used it to show people they are not getting left behind and during their reign, they've built stuff, maybe they tried themselves to screw the Chinese investors over this.
https://thediplomat.com/2019/05/is-sri-lanka-really-a-victim-of-chinas-debt-trap/
From the article itself:
Loans, loans at higher interest than the market, a project that is useless, how do you define a debt trap if this ain't one?
I don't know how much they got paid for this, I don't know how much the bribe was, I don't know why they did it if it's not money, but I know what this is!