Opinion

CHINA SRI LANKA RELATIONS IN REVIEW

01 Nov 2013 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

On 24th October 2013, President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared open the renovated Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH). The renovations were sponsored by China covering a cost of nearly two billion Sri Lankan Rupees. Two new convention halls, similar to BMICH are set to be built in Kandy and Anuradhapura with Chinese assistance. This is the latest culmination in the multi-faceted relationship between China and Sri Lanka.

The following is a wide-ranging interview conducted by Salma Yusuf with an expert on China-Sri Lanka relations, Ambassador Nihal Rodrigo, formerly Secretary General of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC); Honorary Advisor to the President of Sri Lanka on Foreign Affairs; Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary, and Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United Nations and China.

" The Hambantota Development Project has many dimensions, which have given rise to some misconceptions and imaginative speculation. Hambantota is located in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka which is not as well developed as the island’s Western Province where Colombo is sited "

Q: Much has been spoken of the “model relationship between a big state and a small state” in reference to the China – Sri Lanka relationship, though little is extrapolated on the subject outside of the two countries. As Sri Lanka’s former Ambassador to China, and specialist in China – Sri Lanka relations advising the Government of Sri Lanka and the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC), could you provide readers with an insight into this long – standing model inter – state relationship?
Sri Lanka has seen regular Government shifts and changes. Yet an abiding feature of every Government, whatever its political leanings, is that they have all maintained consistently sound bilateral relations with China. Regular consultations take place between the Communist Party of China and individual political parties in Sri Lanka. The relationship is thus neither ideology-driven nor party-based. Cooperation on long-term projects has continued despite Government change. There have been, of course, widely publicised arguments on politico-ideological grounds, between Premier Chou Enlai and Sri Lanka Prime Minister Sir John Kotelawala of the United National Party, at the 1955 Bandung Conference without such encounters jeopardising the bilateral relationship.

Q:You mention that the relationship is neither ideology-driven nor party-based. Could you identify the key milestones in what you describe as this long-abiding relationship?
The historic China-Ceylon Rubber-Rice Pact of April 1952 was signed during the rule of the United National Party, then a strongly anti-Communist political party. The Pact is one now held out by China as an early example of a continuing pragmatic principle that countries with different political systems, and indeed of disparate sizes, could nevertheless co-operate closely and fruitfully for the common benefit of their peoples. The practice endures.
In 1962, Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike took the initiative to bring China and India together in Colombo to discuss border issues following military encounters, although the talks were not particularly successful. President Hu Jintao has described the continuing China-Sri Lanka relationship as a model of small country-big country co-operation and friendship. In 2007, the highly developed Chinese city of Guangzhou with a population of over six million was twinned with Sri Lanka’s Hambantota District with a population of around 570,000 to promote economic and other co-operation.
In over five decades of diplomatic relations between China and Sri Lanka, perhaps the only negative episode occurred during the Cultural Revolution over a dispute concerning some Chinese exports to Colombo. A Red Guard demonstration took place at the Sri Lanka Embassy in Beijing causing some minor damage to the building. The excesses of the Cultural Revolution are of course now frankly acknowledged by the People’s Republic as making its people suffer “some of the most serious setbacks and losses since its founding”.

Q: Having served as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to China and at the Sri Lankan Mission in India, together with your terms as Head of Sri Lankan Mission to the United Nations in both New York and Geneva, what role in particular do you see as critical for Sri Lanka in its strategic geopolitical positioning in the Indian Ocean Region?
For Sri Lanka, it is the economic and development imperative that plays the catalytic role in the major joint projects undertaken in association with China. The Port of Colombo is considered the most efficient in South Asia particularly as a trans-shipment hub for the South Asian region.

It provides regional “connectivity”, the development concept Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has urged to promote economic linkages within the region. Shyam Saran, Special Envoy of the Indian Prime Minister, in his address at Port Blair on 5th September 2009, indicated that “seventy percent of shipping to and from Indian ports is handled by Colombo” and that “a great deal of break-bulk is carried out at Colombo before being dispersed to various regional destinations”.

The Hambantota Development Project has many dimensions, which have given rise to some misconceptions and imaginative speculation. Hambantota is located in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka which is not as well developed as the island’s Western Province where Colombo is sited. The Port complex being developed in Hambantota would ease pressures on Colombo and would eventually include trans-shipment and storage facilities, bunkering, ship-repair (and later perhaps ship-building) facilities, handling/storage of bulk fuel and other supplies. The sea-lanes a few miles south of Hambantota are used for the transport of about 80 % of China’s oil imports and about 50% of India’s energy supplies. Thus just as much as Colombo provides convenient and efficient economic connectivity for India within South Asia, Hambantota, given its location in relation to Indian Ocean maritime routes, would be moreover providing convenient economic connectivity beyond that, for East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) and ASEAN states with the Middle East and West Africa.

There is media-hype, nail-biting and exclamation marks among some think-tanks that link Sitwe in Myannmar, Chittagong in Bangladesh, Hambantota, and Gwadar in Pakistan as China’s “String of Pearls” or, as one ominous commentator described it, “a necklace of thorns around India”.

Q: The London Times wrote of what it called “Sri Lanka’s crucial role in the Indian Ocean Power Struggle” concluding, in corporate jargon, that the country’s “prime location in prime maritime real estate has elevated it to the Jewel in the Crown of the new Indian Ocean paradigm”. How would you respond?
Shyam Saran, in his Port Blair address, indicated that “nervous articulation of a threat can trigger mirror-images and hostile perceptions on the other side. There is no inevitability of conflict with China. We believe there is enough space in this region for both China and India to be ascendant as we once were in history for an extended period of time”.

At a lecture on “Maritime Imperatives of Indian Foreign Policy” organized by the Indian National Maritime Foundation on 11th September 2009 former Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon observed that “for China, as for India and Japan, her energy security is intimately linked to keeping the sea lanes open in the Indian Ocean”. He added, as an example, that “given the need for energy security, it is therefore natural that Indian companies would operate oil tank farms in Trincomalee” in Sri Lanka. He has declared also that there were no Chinese bases in the Indian Ocean despite the “string of pearls” theory, but has kept open the question whether China’s access would, in the future, translate into political influence.

In his Port Blair address, Shyam Saran indicated that both China and India “need to participate actively in shaping the emerging economic architecture in the region, as well as the emerging security architecture which should be open, inclusive and loosely structured. He further clarified that “dealing with China’s challenge is a function not just of how we pursue our bilateral relations with that country but how we order our relations with a large number of countries, both regionally and globally.”

Q: Sri Lanka-China relationship is said not to be a solely a State-driven relationship. What are the key aspects of the relationship outside of the State purview?
China also “represents” what former President Jiang Zemin called “the advanced productive forces” (the miscellaneous corporate, financial and professional entities emerging in China after the economic “opening up”) which play a major role in development projects undertaken in Sri Lanka and other countries.

Before the “opening up”, Jiang Zemin, then a senior CPC official in Shanghai, inspected also the fledgling Greater Colombo Economic Zone to study and assess its functioning. China concedes that the overall level of this sector is “still much lower than in the developed countries in the West” and that China must “vigorously develop its productive forces and improve its economy so that it can gain greater initiative and a more favourable position in future competition in science and technology.”

Development projects in Sri Lanka, including the Hambantota multi-purpose project, involve participation by the Chinese Government, companies and corporate entities under different forms of management, the Chinese Export Import Bank and other groups. The Project Agreement, signed in 2007, and   terms for repayment of its loan component are favourable to Sri Lanka and followed negotiations with the Chinese Government and the “advanced productive forces”. At present, around 80 Chinese companies are also involved in various other Sri Lankan ventures and projects. Over 30 operate under special incentives provided   by the Sri Lanka Board of Investment (BOI).

Moreover, the people to people linkages between Sri Lanka, India and China have enhanced the inter-state relationship, through religious linkages, as well as through cultural interaction, tourism, educational, academic and technical exchanges. All this has engendered economic benefits as well. Sri Lankan Airlines enjoy the privilege of having the largest number of entry points in the world into Indian airports. In early 2007, shortly before the end of my posting in Beijing, landing rights into Shanghai, Guangzhou and Macao for Sri Lankan Airlines were also   negotiated.

A particularly strong response from the general public of China was clearly evident in the aftermath of the tsunami of 2006. Assistance for the post-tsunami recovery process provided by the Chinese Government was considerable in respect of the reconstruction of damaged fisheries and harbour infrastructure, housing as well as emergency medical and other help. In addition to   that, non-Government aid and voluntary contributions directly from the people of China, including school children, the media, artists’ groups, corporations, and non-government organizations and foundations such as the Disabled Peoples Federation were the largest received in Sri Lanka from any country in the world.

Q: Much has been said about China’s support to Sri Lanka’s defeat of terrorism both through military and economic support. Do such contentions reflect a deeply political relationship between the two countries or is it a case of much ado about nothing?
Indeed, the political level, co-operation between the two countries has been extensive over a wide range of regional and international issues. Regular high-level consultations were held and two Presidential State Visits from Sri Lanka were welcomed in China within a short time-span of about a year and a half. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited Sri Lanka shortly after the tsunami in 2005. Ministerial delegations reflecting a variety of functions and activities in the relationship have also been a regular feature.

Like India, Sri Lanka has strongly supported the One China policy in respect of Taiwan, which territory is considered an integral part of the Peoples Republic. Sri Lanka has opposed all attempts by Taiwan to gain membership in international organisations composed of sovereign States.

Q: Sri Lanka and China are firmly opposed to what China calls The Three Evils of terrorism, separatism and extremism. There is close   cooperation against them at bilateral level as well as within regional and multilateral frameworks including at United Nations forums. Could you elaborate?
Sri Lanka is a Dialogue Partner in the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO). Defence cooperation with China, including military training and the supply of arms and other equipment have been of great value in Sri Lanka’s decisive battle against the separatist terrorism. At the United Nations in September 2009, Chinese President Hu Jintao spoke of the need to “embrace a new security thinking of mutual trust, benefit and coordination” including on “non-traditional threats such as terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, transnational organized crime… menacing the world”

Confronted by the ruthless blockage by the LTTE, at MavilAru, of essential water supplies to thousands of civilians, the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa had no alternative but to take military action to decisively defeat terrorism.

Following the liberation of areas held hostage by the LTTE, action was taken, on a priority basis, to establish conditions under which thousands of forcibly displaced/kidnapped people used as human shields by the LTTE were re-settled in their original homes, averting the possibility of concealed LTTE cadres reverting to destructive violence.

Areas extensively mined by the LTTE were cleared before people were safely re-settled in such areas. Multi-lateral assistance from the United Nations and bilateral assistance from India, China, the United States, Pakistan and other countries in the post-conflict process were received to help speed the process of safe, secure re-settlement of the thousands of innocent citizens involved.

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Opinion

CHINA SRI LANKA RELATIONS IN REVIEW

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