The Island Editorial

‘The Taming of the Shrew’

05 December 2016

 

 The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe coalition made its anti-China programme a main plank of its 2015 presidential election campaign. This, it did obviously to curry favour with India and the US-led western powers; it also raised a bogey at home to make the voting public believe that unless the Rajapaksa administration was dislodged Sri Lanka would end up as a Chinese colony. It undertook to drum China out as a development partner immediately after capturing power; it also made a solemn pledge to stop the showpiece Chinese project, the Colombo Port City, posthaste. And, it did as promised.

But, it did not take long for the sobering politico-economic reality to have a mellowing effect on the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government’s China policy. A few weeks into office, it started paying obeisance to China because its western allies were not willing to loosen their purse strings to help it financially. Even the then British Prime Minister David Cameron was seen tugging at his forelock before Chinese President Xi Jinping, who was visiting the UK, which was in need of funds.

Now, we are told that Colombo has offered to buy Chinese aircraft obviously in a bid to propitiate a resentful Beijing. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been quoted as saying in an interview with The South China Morning Post that his government will purchase military transport aircraft from China and seek Chinese assistance to build the Hambantota Port as a hub like Shenzhen.

PM Wickremesinghe has gone so far as to declare, in the press interview: "I have travelled around in some of the Chinese transport planes we have. They are good workhorses." China would never have expected such fawning admiration for its products from the prime minister of a government, whose head went to the extent of donning the Modi jacket during the last presidential election to ingratiate himself with India.

China has obviously let the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe regime stew in its own juice. The IMF bailout package which Sri Lanka had to opt for because aid was not forthcoming from other sources has cost the incumbent administration dear politically. Constricting aid conditions have entailed massive tax hikes and fund cuts in vital sectors so much so that the government is scared of facing an election; it keeps postponing local government polls.

How China has made the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government compliant and obedient reminds us of the Bard’s play, The Taming of the Shrew. The methods Petruchio employs to tame the shrew are mostly psychological whereas those used by China are economic. It is toe-curling to watch the present-day Sri Lankan leaders, driven by their yen for yuan, perform the ‘Dragon Dance’ as it were.

The jewel in the crown of Sri Lanka’s Megapolis project is the Chinese funded Port City, which has become an economic fulcrum of sorts. The government is banking on it to boost its development programme which has not yet got off the ground. China does not seem so keen to kickstart the project for obvious reasons. Hence, the government’s attempt to bribe China by ordering some military transport aircraft! China with trillions of dollars to lend always has the last laugh.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration is likely to experience some more turns of the Chinese screw in time to come. Perhaps, pressure may continue to mount until it overcomes resistance from India and purchases fighter jets (JF-17s) co-developed by Pakistan and China.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government wouldn’t have had to grovel before China in this shameful manner if it had acted wisely without going out of its way to snub that country in a bid to please its western masters, from whom its leaders won’t get anything more than an occasional ‘gloveless’ handshake, some blandishments and an invitation to an international forum.

Meanwhile, the present administration condemned the Hambantota Port and questioned its predecessor’s wisdom of locating it in that part of the country, which it called godforsaken. Now, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has argued, in the aforesaid press interview, in a bid to prove a point that Hambantota is much more developed than Shenzhen in 1979, when he visited that part of China.

As for promoting the Mattala Airport and the Hambantota Port, the present government is in the same predicament as a salesman who is compelled to market some products, having condemned them as worthless in public. This is why politicians must desist from denouncing the country’s economic assets to gain undue political mileage.