Sri Lanka crisis gives India chance to gain sway vs China
NEW DELHI (AP) — Sri Lanka's strategic location has attracted outsized interest in the small island nation from regional giants China and India for more than a decade, with Beijing and its free-flowing loans and infrastructure investments widely seen as having gained the upper hand in the quest for influence.
But Sri Lanka's economic collapse has proved an opportunity for India to swing the pendulum back, with New Delhi stepping in with massive financial and material assistance to its neighbor.
“There is no such thing as charity in international politics,” said Sreeram Chaulia, who heads the School of International Affairs at O.P. Jindal University in Sonipat, India.
“The intent is to drive China away from India’s backyard and restore the balance in New Delhi’s favor.”
Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million, sits off the southern coast of India on the Indian Ocean shipping lanes through which China receives the vast majority of its imported oil from the Middle East.
As part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative to pump money into infrastructure projects across Asia and Africa, former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa took on many loans, including $1.1 billion to build a port in his home region of Hambantota despite the plan having been rejected by an expert panel.
When the deep-water port failed to generate the foreign revenue needed to pay China back, Sri Lanka in 2017 was forced to hand the facility and thousands of acres of land around it to Beijing for 99 years — giving China a key foothold directly opposite regional rival India’s coastline.
That stoked India's ongoing concerns about China’s growing influence in South Asia, particularly in smaller countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal and Maldives.
Concerns over China's increasing regional...