Grasping the reasons behind China’s Lankan stranglehold

In the light of its fears that Beijing is wielding ever-greater influence in Sri Lanka, the West, argues Neville de Silva, should look to its own role
in advancing Chinese power in this small but strategically-important island nation

asianaffairs.in: Stringent critics say that former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Government sold the country’s soul to China.
Casting China in such a Mephistophelean role might be rather hyperbolic, though some Western commentators, generally antagonistic to China and still unable to free themselves from a Cold War mentality, tend to do so with alacrity.

Nevertheless, even more impartial observers of the Sri Lanka scene looking at China’s dominant role in financing development projects here seem to see more than a grain of sand in what the Rajapaksa regime claimed was nothing more than a grain of sand.
But today those suspicious of China’s long-term interest in Sri Lanka are breathing easier following Rajapaksa’s unexpected defeat in the presidential election in early January, which brought a more West-oriented Government to power, a Government that has during its short time in office already made overtures to the West and, more importantly, to India.
Mangala Samaraweera is the new Minister of Foreign Affairs in this rather strange coalition of forces that came together late last year, not on the basis of some common ideology but bent on defeating the Rajapaksa regime for its authoritarianism, family rule, breakdown in the rule of law and corruption.
He has already visited the United Kingdom and the US, countries that were at the forefront of moves demanding UN investigations into war crimes and human rights abuses allegedly committed in the latter stages of the 26-year war against the minority Tamil separatist group, which the Rajapaksa Government ended in May 2009.
Samaraweera also held discussions with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, urging the world body to postpone a report that the Office of the UN Human Rights Commissioner was due to present to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council in March, following a resolution spearheaded by Washington that was carried in March 2014 with the support mainly of the West. The Human Rights Commissioner has promised to put it off till September.
Foreign policy approach
More importantly perhaps, the new President Maithripala Sirisena made his first official overseas visit to India, Sri Lanka’s closest and most crucial neighbour in what was seen as a fence-mending effort after Rajapaksa’s blatant China-tilt aroused India’s concerns.
Hopes of a more balanced foreign policy approach, if not one inclined towards the current Washington-New Delhi axis, were strengthened when during the election campaign last year the Rajapaksa government’s China ties came under attack and then President Sirisena announced his official foreign visit to New Delhi.
Indian strategic thinkers and officials seem suspicious of Beijing’s wider geostrategic interest in this part of the Indian Ocean, especially since China’s growing economic hold on Sri Lanka would provide an ideal geographical location from which to challenge Indian dominance in the vast Indian Ocean. China is concerned over protecting the critical Indian Ocean sea lanes through which pass oil and other vital commerce that feed the growing energy and economic needs of East Asia.
Western commentators in particular can be ignorant of the historical links between China and what was then Lanka, going back 1000 years or more. The ancient port of Manthota (now known as Mannar) in Sri Lanka’s northwest served as an entrepot where Arab and western traders bartered goods with the Chinese from the East.
In more modern times, Sri Lanka recognised the People’s Republic of China in 1950 and established formal diplomatic relations with China in 1956. In 1952 during the Korean War, Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was then known, and China signed the Rubber-Rice Pact that endured for more than a quarter of a century.
What is not generally known by some commentators on Sri Lankan affairs is that Colombo’s right-of-centre government of the late 1960s was reluctant to join the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) at its founding in 1967, though invited by the Malaysian prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman to do so, because the organisation was seen as a Western creation to stop China’s advance in Asia.
So there is nothing new in the close bilateral relations between Asia’s emerging superpower and this small Indian Ocean island nation.
Suspicions of China’s
long-term intent
But suspicions of China’s long-term intent began to burgeon particularly after 2005, with the coming to office of Mahinda Rajapaksa as President. His attempts to negotiate peace with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the long-running war with this separatist group demanding an independent Tamil state in northern-eastern Sri Lanka failed when the LTTE continued to provoke the Government with military incursions and attacks on the security forces.
Determined to crush the northern Tamil insurgency, Rajapaksa and his younger brother Gotabaya, now the Secretary of Defence, had to depend more and more on Chinese weaponry from heavy artillery to naval craft and fighter aircraft as Western powers refused to supply the much needed arms to fight one of the world’s most ruthless organisations with a conventional fighting force, an effective navy and a fledgling air force.
Credit lines were opened to enable Sri Lanka to buy the weaponry it needed as the Rajapaksa Government intensified the military campaign.
The quid pro quo was that Sri Lanka would not recognise Taiwan, which was easy, as Colombo had long followed a one-China policy. The second condition was somewhat more difficult: not to allow the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, to enter Sri Lanka, a predominantly Buddhist country.
It seems clear enough that today China sees the importance of Sri Lanka’s geographically strategic location, some 30 miles from the Indian coast towards the north and close to the vital sea lanes to the south.
It is this location that made China engage Sri Lanka as a ‘Dialogue Partner’ in the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which some observers consider an Asian counter to the Western military alliance NATO.
China also secured Colombo’s eager support for its Maritime Silk Route, which its critics call Beijing’s ‘string of pearls’ connecting ports in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and some in the African continent, built with Chinese assistance.
What is most visible to both Sri Lankans and foreigners as the tangible signs of China’s participation here are the infrastructure projects such as the sea ports, a new international airport, highways and expressways, power stations, railways, oil tanks and a communication tower.
Not without severe critics
But all this is not without its severe critics, who argue that China is gradually tightening its hold on the Sri Lankan economy as more and more projects, many of them ‘unsolicited’, are signed without much transparency. The terms and conditions of these agreements signed between the two Governments are not presented to Parliament, leaving the Sri Lankans clueless.
‘Both Governments seem to operate on the principle that what the people do not know will not hurt them,’ said an editorial in the prestigious privately-owned Sunday Times, timed to coincide with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Colombo in September. Either that, or there is too much to hide, the editorial added.
A characteristic of the kind of opacity and swiftness with which deals are made public is the sudden announcement that China Communications Construction Co Ltd. had been awarded a $1.5 billion deal to reclaim land from the sea and build a 233-hectare island off Galle Face Green, the well-known seaside promenade in the heart of Colombo.
Who asked for this, heaven and a few in Colombo only know. But this much is now known to the public: China will have effective control of 108 hectares, 20 of which will be on a freehold basis, 88 on a 99-year lease. The Sri Lankan Government will have 62 hectares to develop as it pleases.
If today China has emerged as Sri Lanka’s chief provider of development assistance, displacing Japan, traditionally the biggest helper, the fault lies to a large extent with the Western nations that were more interested in castigating the Rajapaksa Government for alleged war crimes and other skulduggery, as perceived by human rights activists, than in helping rebuild the country in the post-war period.
Sri Lanka and China
To revive the economy and the war-damaged infrastructure, Sri Lanka, now a lower middle-income country and with concessional loans hard to come by, had to look outside for assistance. China moved in quickly with help and no questions asked at the time.
To be fair by the Rajapaksa Government, it offered some of the projects to India, including building the new sea port in southern Hambantota and a power plant in the northeast. But Indian reactions were slow and hesitant. By the time New Delhi had made up its mind, China had already jumped in with alacrity. Moreover, Western concerns over human and civil rights in Sri Lanka and their attempts to browbeat the Rajapaksa Government into submission only resulted in Colombo moving ever closer to Beijing, particularly as it needed a powerful and influential nation to provide Sri Lanka with diplomatic support at the highest international levels, and to give economic assistance to counter the West. When constituent elements of the present Government in Colombo criticised the multiple deals with China, it was not really a condemnation of China but of the Rajapaksa regime for its opacity in the China projects and what they suspected as corruption and the over-invoicing of costs so that some could be creamed off the top.
It was no wonder that shortly after President Sirisena assumed office, Beijing sent top officials to talk things over, especially with regard to the Colombo Port City project on which the new administration has sought environmental assessment reports from Government environment agencies.
Obviously Sri Lanka is not going to loosen its ties with China. It has been a long-time ally and friend. That is why President Sirisena is paying an official visit to China, his second official foreign visit, during which he is expected to assure China of Sri Lanka’s friendship although some of the mega infrastructure projects will come under scrutiny to see whether they have been above board.
The future relationship should become clearer after that visit as President Sirisena has pledged that his foreign policy will be friendship with all. While that is the declared aim, what is palpable is that economic and trade ties with India will strengthen just as any developing military aspects of the China relationship will surely be downplayed.