It used to be, mind you some decades ago, a normal policy for foreign government to keep what they have payed for. Take Panama or Suez canal. That being said, the practice is essentially colonialism and for various reasons it became taboo in the west.
Publicly that is. If you are private company there is still a lot of things you can get away with, but you won't get gunboats to show up anymore.
Simply put. China is doing the same thing. Performing business like decisions on international scale. West has just decided that such approach is immoral and mostly abandoned it as a policy.
Has it though? They don't do it overtly but through IMF. When a debt ridden country approaches IMF for help that help comes with heavy strings attached such as cutting down social spending, and privatisation. And IMF is controlled by ex-colonial nations. Even a developed nation like Greece got a taste of it. The funny thing is through a debt ridden country IMF is in fact helping debtors who are mostly western entities.
There are quite a few layers here to peel but safe to say west hasn't abandoned their policy just that they outsourced it to IMF.
If the lending country is poor and one does not take the asset itself as collateral, then how does one lend to these countries? Don't lend at all? What should these countries do to acquire critical infrastructure?
You are on the right track. That's one of the reasons China makes inroads across global south, because it's willing to "make a deal". Another reason is that China doesn't want any sort of commitments to international standards, democracy etc.
Western governments offer 'help', but it's rarely what local governments want. And often it means publicly complying with rules imposed from the 'outside'. When the 'outside' includes your former colonial overlord and you have turned anti-colonialism into most important aspect of your political identity (for example African Union has no problem with dictators, or genocide, but you better not have capital on different continent) you'd be undermining your regime by accepting it.
In the meantime China offers exactly what you ask for, and doesn't ask about minorities or how long your presidential term is.
For now it's mostly working out for locals, their governments at least. In the long run ... Congo had very beneficial relationship with Portugal during the first century or so, not so much afterwards.[0]
There are those who believe that conditions such as committing to international standards and democracy, even though well-intended, are actually counter-productive — at least during a country's development phase.
It's indeed an open question how beneficial the relationship will be in the long term. But it's not at all guaranteed that it will end up like Portugal. China was a big naval power during the Ming dynasty, but didn't colonize Africa or South-East Asia. One should be careful with projecting western history onto China.
Some high-profile Chinese figures recognize the problem that BRI projects don't always end up benefitting people. For example, Zhang Chun, researcher at the Center for African Studies at Yunnan University, said this:
"There is a lack of an accurate analysis of Africa's benefits from the Belt and Road Initiative and that needs to be remedied"
