“Privatization” but the owning company is another country’s state corporation - come to think of it, that also happened to British Rail, with big parts of the line being bought up by other European countries’ state train companies.

This all happened pre-COVID too - most of the articles about the Belt and Road failing are about debts going bad directly as a result of COVID’s trade slowdown, so whatever the heck is going on it appears to be to be a one off at the very least.