[Sri Lanka’s alliance with China built gradually, during the
years when Western nations excoriated Mr. Rajapaksa over his human rights
record and China soothed him with billions of dollars in loans for new ports
and roads. The relationship seemed to intensify in recent months, prompting
fears in neighboring India that, despite vigorous official denials, Mr.
Rajapaksa was ready to break with tradition and allow Sri Lankan territory to
be used for Chinese military activity.]
By Ellen Barry
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Maithripala Sirisena, who won Sri Lanka's presidential
election Thusday,
has taken rhetorical aim at foreign-backed development
projects.
Credit Ishara S.Kodikara/Agence France-Presse — Getty
Images
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NEW DELHI — On a Sunday four months ago, a
vessel pulled unannounced into Sri
Lanka’s Colombo harbor: the Chinese Navy submarine Great Wall No.
329, which is designed to carry torpedoes, a cruise missile and a 360-pound
warhead.
Sri Lanka’s defense minister shrugged it off as an “operational
good-will visit.” But anxiety was already radiating as far as New Delhi, where
the visit was seen as a clear declaration that China had
arrived in India’s backyard — with the blessing of Sri Lanka’s president at the
time, Mahinda
Rajapaksa.
Whatever China’s long-term plans were for strategically important
Sri Lanka, they met with a sudden obstruction on Friday morning, when Mr.
Rajapaksa was voted out of office in a startling upset.
David Brewster, a visiting fellow at the Strategic and Defense
Studies Center at the Australian National University, said that was the price
to be paid for dealing with a government that had increasingly centralized
power. “You think you only need to deal with one guy,” he said, “and then if
you lose that one guy, it has a serious impact on the relationship.”
Sri Lanka’s alliance with China built gradually, during the
years when Western nations excoriated Mr. Rajapaksa over his human rights
record and China soothed him with billions of dollars in loans for new ports
and roads. The relationship seemed to intensify in recent months, prompting
fears in neighboring India that, despite vigorous official denials, Mr.
Rajapaksa was ready to break with tradition and allow Sri Lankan territory to
be used for Chinese military activity.
Chinese-funded infrastructure projects were among Mr.
Rajapaksa’s central accomplishments.
Gleaming modern cranes stand in a row at the waterfront in
Colombo, the capital, where, in September, President Xi Jinping of
China began construction of a $1.5 billion “port city” including malls, hotels
and marinas, part of a constellation of Chinese investments that represent an
estimated $4 billion in loans. So many Chinese construction crews have begun
work in Sri Lanka that one newspaper reported a surge of interest in studying
Mandarin by locals who hope to land work as interpreters.
But the Chinese projects are also the focus of irritation. Ahead
of Mr. Xi’s September visit, The Sunday Times, a Colombo-based newspaper, wrote
that secrecy and the rapid pace of Chinese building “fuel conspiracy theories
and genuine fears alike that, to put it mildly, Sri Lanka is in China’s
pocket.” Voters complained that, grand as they appear, the building projects
were largely carried out by Chinese workers. Opposition leaders warned their
audiences about the country’s mounting debt to China.
Maithripala Sirisena, who was sworn in as president on Friday
evening, warned during the campaign that Sri Lanka would “become a colony, and
we would become slaves” if Mr. Rajapaksa’s policies continued for another six
years.
“The land that the white man took over by means of military
strength is now being obtained by foreigners by paying ransom to a handful of
persons,” he wrote in his manifesto.
Last month, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was sworn in as prime
minister on Friday, said he would cancel the planned $1.5 billion port city,
and Harsha de Silva, economic affairs spokesman for the opposition United
National Party, said the new government planned to review all major
infrastructure projects for “irregularities.”
This position, he said, does not indicate “any misgivings or bad
blood with China.”
“We consider China a good friend; it just happens that many of
these projects in question happened to be Chinese,” he said. “We will have a
balanced approach between India and China, unlike the current regime, which was
antagonizing India almost by its closeness to China.”
One reason Mr. Rajapaksa drew so close to China was that the
country’s traditional donors, like the United States and Canada, had harshly
criticized his government’s conduct in its war against Tamil rebels, and cut
back on aid. As the West drew back, China, stepped in, both rich and easygoing
on human rights.
It was also eyeing a much greater role in the Indian Ocean. Sri
Lanka is a linchpin in one of Mr. Xi’s key foreign policy projects, a maritime
trade route intended to connect China and Europe, known as the “Silk Road.” The
plan, backed by a $40 billion fund, is viewed nervously by India as an
encircling strategy that could undermine its own dominance in the region and
conceivably culminate in the construction of Chinese military facilities.
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, reacted to the election’s
outcome with notable enthusiasm on Friday, placing a congratulatory call to Mr.
Sirisena before the votes were all counted.
Chinese analysts, for their part, said they did not expect Mr.
Rajapaksa’s defeat to disrupt Chinese plans in Sri Lanka.
“Many politicians say one thing before elections and do another
thing after they are elected,” said Wang Dehua, a specialist in South Asia at
the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. As for the port city
project, he said: “I believe that it brings benefits to Sri Lanka, so why would
they cancel it? I think the possibility of cancellation is small.”
In fact, China has repeatedly weathered similar waves of
populist resentment in some other countries where it invested heavily, said
Jonathan Holslag, the head of research at the Brussels Institute of
Contemporary China Studies, who has studied China’s response to coups in five
African countries.
Typically, China responded to those political transitions by
maintaining a low profile for several months, then approaching the new
leadership with proposals for joint initiatives, he said. It almost always
worked, even with opposition leaders who had harshly criticized China.
“They all, in one way or another, turn to China, because it was
the only player ready to help them finance infrastructure and public spending,”
he said. “I assume that this is going to happen with Sri Lanka.”
He added, though, that discomfort with Chinese loans is likely
to spread throughout Asia, as people register “the difference between credit
and real aid.”
With the swearing-in of a new president in Sri Lanka, various
governments will see an opportunity to reset their relationship with the island
nation. Among them is the United States, which “really dealt themselves out of”
any kind of influence in Sri Lanka by taking a tough line on rights abuses
during the civil war, and would have remained marginalized “for many, many
years to come” had Mr. Rajapaksa won, said Mr. Brewster from the Australian
National University.
This time, he said, Washington should be prepared, perhaps with
its own investment program.
“There has been an underestimation of the power of Chinese
money, the simple and pure power, and how much of it they are willing to throw
around the region,” he said. “I talk to people in the strategic community
within these countries, people who tend to be well disposed toward the West,
and they simply regard the U.S. as nothing.”
“It’s simply that money talks,” he said.
Bree Feng contributed reporting from Beijing, and Dharisha
Bastians from Colombo, Sri Lanka.
