China’s money has made it harder for Western-led institutions like the World Bank to demand economic reforms and environmental standards.

This has many implications. From one side, demanding environmental standards is a good thing, but the economic reforms usually involve the so called "austerity", with enormous drawbacks to the lower middle-class and poor part of the population. In any case, here in the developing world, it's seen a neo-colonialism, rich europeans/americans forcing their policies on us so they can plunder our resources.

Of course, China does plundering too, but we've had enough experience with euro-american colonialism in the past, so they're seen with suspicion, no matter what. It kind of an inversion of the "Devil we know" idiom, China being the "Devil we don't know".