Ceylon Today Editorial

Bringing China’s ‘wars’ to SL

19 January 2017

One of China's State controlled dailies, 'Global Times' has taken a swipe on both India and Japan, vis-à-vis Sri Lanka.

This is in the context of Sri Lanka bartering debt to equity to its creditor China, such as the white elephant Hambantota Port it funded, when its minion Mahinda Rajapaksa held sway over the island's fortune till not so long ago.(See also Tuesday's Ceylon Today)

Unsurprisingly, this article from the 'Global Times,' or, extracts of it, was published by DNA India, a privately run newspaper in India. There are no private newspapers in China, because, unlike India, China is not a democracy, but run by the Communist Party of China.

China has called both of these her neighbours to invest on their piece of real estate in Sri Lanka, whilst also referring to India of being jealous in respect of this debt to equity deal that Colombo has entered into, with Beijing.

However, it's China which has the capital and not India, or for that matter, the Japanese Government. Capital in those countries is held by their private sector and not necessarily by their governments. And, even if their governments are capital surplus, being democracies, and hence being accountable, they cannot spend their capital according to the whim and fancy of either Tokyo or Delhi, which, however, Beijing can, do.

Ostensibly, 'Global Times' may be a mouthpiece of Beijing and a subsidiary of the more well known State controlled national newspaper of the Chinese Government, the 'People's Daily.' Therefore, their dig on both Delhi and Tokyo, are understandable, from a historical perspective.

The year 1962 saw the Chinese invasion of India (both countries share a common border) and Beijing may well have overthrown the Nehru Government and captured India, if not for the USA and UK threatening to come to India's military aid, then. And, China is also a firm supporter of India's more overt enemy, Pakistan, aiding and abetting the latter in its last three major military conflicts with India, namely in 1965, 1971 and 1999.

Beijing's dig at Delhi is also double edged. Delhi, especially in the near 11½ year period from January 1980 to May 1991, beginning with Indira Gandhi's re-election to power in January 1980 and ending up on 21 May, 1991, when her son and former Premier Rajiv was blasted to pieces by an LTTE suicide bomber, save in the last four years of that period, Delhi nearly bled Colombo white, by overtly and covertly supporting Tamil terrorism in their near successful bid to destabilize Colombo, culminating in the threat of a military invasion in 1987, thereby, virtually bringing down Colombo to its knees.

During this period, only India's arch-enemies, Pakistan and China, provided defence stores to Colombo, in its war against Tamil terrorism.

Beijing's message to Delhi and Colombo through that article is, 'China supported Sri Lanka in its times of military and economic need, what has Delhi done in return? This is the context that Delhi is eager that Colombo enter into a broader economic partnership with India, by signing the much touted Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement (ETCA), where, there is a school of thought which says that there is little or no economic gain to Colombo by signing this agreement.

China's shot at Tokyo over Colombo also takes similar, military-political lines. Japan invaded China in the 1930s which only ended after Tokyo's capitulation at the end of World War II in August 1945. And, in the past seven years, China, in its expansionist policies over the South China and East China seas, has been claiming a host of islands, atolls and coral reefs as their own, to the chagrin of their South East and Far East neigbours such as Japan, which dispute such claims.

Sri Lanka which enjoyed warm ties with Japan since 1977 due to the J.R. Jayewardene-San Francisco Peace Conference of 1951 nexus, however, saw a cooling off of those relations once Rajapaksa assumed power in 2005. Rajapaksa , instead, cosied up to Beijing, to the consternation of Delhi, Tokyo and the West. It ended only after Rajapaksa's defeat at the 8 January, 2015 poll.
The new government re-mended the broken fences with Delhi, Tokyo and the West and distanced itself from Beijing, only to change course when realizing that capital required to rid the country of poverty, was only with Beijing.

Beijing's message to Colombo via that articulates that while Delhi and Tokyo have been mouthing only platitudes, they have done very little to alleviate its poverty. On the other hand Beijing is a doer, not a mere flatterer, whilst conveniently forgetting that Sri Lanka has got itself into this debt trap, in part, because of China's own acts of omission and commission, acting in concert together with its trusted lieutenant, Rajapaksa.