How Sri Lanka’s Hambantota became a Colony of China

 Last week, after a long and arduous process of deliberation, helpless negotiations and amidst severe opposition from domestic as well as international fronts, our neighborhood island nation Sri Lanka formally handed over the Hambantota port to the people’s republic of China.

by Sanghamitra Purohit

17 December 2017

How Sri Lanka's Hambantota became a Colony of China - TFIPOST

Last week, after a long and arduous process of deliberation, helpless negotiations and amidst severe opposition from domestic as well as international fronts, our neighborhood island nation Sri Lanka formally handed over the Hambantota port to the people’s republic of China. This is a big statement. Of course, it’s not the official line by press releases of both the countries involved. But whatever vocabulary they chose to use, however much they try to wrap it in glossy packaging and put little Chinese bows on top of it, they are fooling no one.

Sri Lanka owes a staggering debt of 8 billion dollars to china. With 90% of the island nation revenues going for debt payments and a dismal 3.5% growth rate (2016) it had its hands tied. Readers will wonder how did it come to that, but for international experts who have kept a close watch over Asia Pacific region, this was no surprise. Many predicted it long back.

The Hambantota deal was valued at 1.1 billion USD. By this agreement 70% of the port’s stakes and ownership now belong to state owned China Merchant ports holdings company. The deal was initially struck out at handing over 80% stakes but amid severe protests on domestic and international fronts, it was finalised at 70%.

Hambantota Port project has seen protests from locals and continued objections from neighbouring countries. After repeated raised concerned by India, Sri Lanka managed to stop china from using it as a naval base. Critics have long stated the port is a compromise with Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. As seen with Pakistan’s CPEC, in Hambantota port, all contracts are owned by Chinese companies, jobs are provided to Chinese workers and now the port and its adjacent economic zone belongs to china. As anyone would have guessed, native Sri Lankans get no benefit from it.

Sri Lanka’s current Prime Minister, Ranil Wickramasinghe issued a statement at the formal handing over ceremony last weekend: “with this agreement, we have started to pay back the loans. Hambantota will be converted to a major port in the Indian ocean. There will be an economic zone and industrialization in the area which will lead to economic development and promote tourism. “Sadly, not many of his own countrymen are buying this candyfloss. They have their reasons.

Hambantota lies 240 kms away from Colombo. It was a small fishing town with barely 20,000 people in the general area. Interestingly, it was also the home constituency of the former president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The country has been raged with nearly 26 year long civil war with the LTTE. After the brutal and bloody crushing of the rebels under the Rajapaksa regime, the then government was heavily criticised in international circuits. No country wanted to invest in it. UNHRC was furious, Rajapaksa was branded a ruthless ruler. China and Pakistan supplied arms and ammunition during the anti -LTTE operations. Rajapaksa was also infamous for several corruption charges and nepotistic policies. He wanted rapid economic growth and a legacy for his own family. His brothers, his son all were cabinet ministers.

China saw an opportunity. Not only did the Chinese granted Sri Lanka unprecedented amount of money, they were also lenient in the matters of viability of the projects and Sri Lanka’s ability to pay back. Hambantota , the adjacent economic zone, a swanky highway, a 35,000-seater cricket stadium and an over the top airport some 20 miles further inland, advertised as a modern marvel of infrastructure and the Colombo port city zone came together at a Whopping cost of 8 billion USD.

The said airport is another depressing reality. Mattala Rajapaksa international airport is designed to handle a million passengers a year. What it sees is barely a dozen workers per day. The only way it makes money is by renting out space for rice storage. The only time it saw any action was when 350 security personnel had to storm out armed with firecrackers (that’s right, firecrackers) to chase away wild animals swarming the area.

The port is widely regarded as non-viable. In fact, India has earlier maintained the stand. Rajapaksa had tried to defend his pet projects several times by saying India was simply uninterested to invest in Hambantota. Experts were of the opinion India was wary about the viability of the port. And moreover, India was simple uninterested to invest in such an extravagant project just to “bolster Rajapaksa’s ego. “China after the deal of 70% ownership of the port has declared it will further invest another 700 million USD for “development and viability “of the port.

That China’s money is coming with impending Chinese ownership of their land was not a secret for the Sri Lankan public. Major Buddhist factions oppose it. Several ministers including then minister of ports Mr. Arjuna Ranatunga (former cricketer) were all vocal about the economical incapability of Sri Lanka to pay back the Chinese. A barren highway, an empty port and a lonely airport is only testimony to the staggering burden it has been for Sri Lanka. What more, as per the agreement, Sri Lanka cannot even undertake lumbering activities in the adjacent areas. Some “economical advantage “indeed!!!

China has been asserting and gradually thumping its control over the Indian ocean region. It happened with Djibouti, where china established a strong naval base, to south china sea where china built artificial islands and claimed territory. As has been widely acknowledged the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) or the glossy name “old silk route” is only a rue. China is securing passages for middle eastern oil and asserting absolute control over the Indian ocean and Asia Pacific region through the strait of Malacca. Sri Lanka has just been a hapless victim in a grand scheme.

But course, after India expressed concerns, Sri Lanka managed to ensure that China cannot convert Hambantota into a naval base and Sri Lanka will control the security at the port and economic zone.

But that is only a small relief. China has long since shown that submarines and naval base is not the only way to establish control. China’s sly tactics to acquire Hambantota has now put other economically backward countries like Nepal, Myanmar into cautionary mode. How much China asserts its power and controls the Indian ocean region and what steps India takes to thwart it is something the whole world is waiting to watch.

How Sri Lanka's Hambantota became a Colony of China - TFIPOST

Chinese President Xi Jinping just managed to secure himself Mao-like power

 His name was written into the constitution, which gives him a new level of authority.

By Zeeshan Aleem@ZeeshanAleem  Updated Oct 25, 2017, 12:53pm EDT

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/10/24/16533526/china-xi-jinping-constitution-chinese-congress-mao

Getty Images

Chinese President Xi Jinping has just accomplished something Donald Trump could only dream of: getting himself written into his party's constitution.

The Chinese Communist Party has voted to put Xi into the same pantheon as Communist Party legends Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, paving the way for him to lead the country into the indefinite future. It also means that he will have new power to expand his crackdown on dissent at home, pursue aggressive military moves in the South China Sea, and ensure that much of the Chinese economy remains under de facto state control.

Xi’s elevation happened on Tuesday, during the last day of the party’s congress, a weeklong event that occurs once every five years as a way for the party to fill key leadership slots and set national policy priorities.

More than 2,300 delegates voted unanimously to enshrine “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” into the party’s constitution. The addition of that phrase — which some analysts joke is as unwieldy in Chinese as it is in English — effectively means that Xi’s vision for China is officially part of state doctrine.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a historian of China at the University of California Irvine, says it’s premature to say whether Xi’s level of power should be compared directly to Mao, the founder of modern China, or Deng, the iconic reformer who opened up China’s economy to the world in the 1980s and helped pave the path to its meteoric rise today.

“It’s better to focus on the fact that he’s in the same league as those two,” Wasserstrom told me.

Xi is poised to become very, very powerful

The Chinese Communist Party has only added only one leader, Mao, to the constitution while he was alive. The party added Deng’s name and vision for China to the constitution after he died in 1997. No other Chinese leaders have had their name added to the constitution.

Experts say that Xi’s addition to the constitution gives him a vast political mandate and means he could be in power longer than most Chinese presidents. The recent norm in China is for the president to take on two five-year terms. Xi is currently beginning his second five-year term, but now it’s more likely that he could potentially end up taking on a third or fourth term.

Alternatively, Xi could step down after his second term but still hold sway over the direction of the country. Damien Ma, a fellow at the Paulson Institute, a nonpartisan Chicago think tank, told me, “Xi could certainly adopt the Deng model where he may not hold formal posts but clearly has huge influence over all major party decisions.”

And Xi’s prospects of holding power for an extended period of time grew even stronger on Wednesday, when the Communist Party revealed the five new members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the most senior decision-making body in the party. As the Washington Post notes, in a break from recent tradition, none of those new members appear young enough to be a successor to Xi when he completes his term in 2022. That absence of an obvious heir could be yet another sign that Xi will hold the reins for longer than 10 years.

Xi wants to make China great again. That’s going to be easier now.

So what is Xi’s vision? We got a taste of it during his whopping 3.5-hour-long opening speech at the beginning of the Congress last week, during which he heralded a “new era” in Chinese political life and repeatedly boasted of China’s reemergence as a “great power” in the world.

Xi spoke about reforming state-owned companies, but didn't suggest that he intended to privatize them as part of a bid to make China into a more conventional free market economy.

As the New York Times noted, Xi said the word “market” only 19 times, compared to 24 times by his predecessor Hu Jintao at the previous congress in 2012, and 51 times by then-President Jiang Zemin at the 1997 congress.

Julian Gewirtz, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School studying Chinese history and politics, told me after the speech that Xi emphasized “that he is strongly committed to the distinctive Chinese hybrid system in economics and party-led system in politics.”

Xi also championed China’s growing influence on the world stage, celebrating the country’s increasing control of the disputed South China Sea under his first term and calling for efforts to make the Chinese military more powerful. He described China as a country that wasn’t looking to pick fights but would unapologetically defend its national interests.

As he spoke of his country’s growing stature, Xi made it clear that China wasn’t trying to mimic or replace Western powers. He said that China is “blazing a new trail” for developing nations to follow.

“Under his reign, there is no more hope of convergence,” François Godement, director of the China-Asia program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the Washington Post. In other words: Under Xi, China is not simply going to morph into a Western-style liberal democracy as it grows wealthier.

And Xi signaled that he would continue to crack down on any signs of dissent. Under his rule, Chinese authorities have restricted the ability of citizens to criticize the government online and hit NGOs with suffocating government regulations. During his speech, Xi suggested there was more to come — pledging enhanced internet censorship to “clearly oppose and resist the whole range of erroneous viewpoints.”

“The trend line is away from opening up — it’s increasingly tough to be a human rights lawyer, a feminist activist, an NGO worker,” Wasserstrom said.

While it’s impossible to predict exactly how long Xi will end up staying in power, one thing has become clear: China’s president has just been given quite a bit more power to lead the world’s biggest country.

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/10/24/16533526/china-xi-jinping-constitution-chinese-congress-mao