It's already backfiring. ASEAN countries (with the exception of the Philippines, whose president is Xi's most masochistic concubine) are renegging on previous high-interest loan plans from China, and the Pacific Islands Forum has all but openly declared itself a "bloc to resist China." The Sri Lanka Incident (Hambantota Port, specifically) was the wake-up call a lot of nations needed, and the eerie parallels between the handover of Hambantota and the handover of Hong Kong to the British Empire were not lost on many people.
Even Pakistan, China's "iron brother," is starting to chafe under the weight China imposes upon their neo-tributaries. The most important effect of China's loans, though, is going to be their inability to continue lending as much as they have pledged to loan. The loans are denominated in US Dollars, and the Renminbin is in a tail-spin (earlier today when I went to Minsheng Bank to exchange RMB for dollars the exchange rate had fallen to 6.94 RMB to 1 USD), and the Chinese population is starting to gripe about that money not being spent at home, since the CPC's entire claim to legitimacy for years has been "we make your lives more comfortable in exchange for the freedoms you give up."
The Western media doesn't show it (they need SOMEONE to be scared of, after all), but China is in the process of flying apart at the seams right now. Living in Beijing I am watching it happen.