The last time emerging markets faced a major debt crisis, in the 1990s, influential creditors, named after traditional centres of diplomacy and finance, could quickly gather in private to agree a solution.

These days, bringing together a more diverse group of lenders has proved a more cumbersome exercise.

The Paris Club’s members are the mostly western nations that used to dominate bilateral lending. But their contributions are dwarfed by China, which now lends more to the world’s poorest countries than all other bilateral creditors put together. The London Club of commercial banks has lost its relevance, with borrowers increasingly raising finance on bond markets.

These shifts have meant creditors’ positions are far less aligned. As Anna Gelpern, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, puts it, new entrants are “just not embedded” in the clubby set-up of the past.

What’s replaced the clubs is a blame game, where critics accuse China of lending on terms that give it hidden advantage over other lenders. As its loans have soured, the country has become an alternative lender of last resort, challenging the IMF and stymying restructuring negotiations by trying to impose its own terms.