The Port of Colombo, Sri Lanka.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
New York Times: How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port
HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — Every time Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, turned to his Chinese allies for loans and assistance with an ambitious port project, the answer was yes.
Yes, though feasibility studies said the port wouldn’t work. Yes, though other frequent lenders like India had refused. Yes, though Sri Lanka’s debt was ballooning rapidly under Mr. Rajapaksa.
Over years of construction and renegotiation with China Harbor Engineering Company, one of Beijing’s largest state-owned enterprises, the Hambantota Port Development Project distinguished itself mostly by failing, as predicted. With tens of thousands of ships passing by along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, the port drew only 34 ships in 2012.
And then the port became China’s.
Mr. Rajapaksa was voted out of office in 2015, but Sri Lanka’s new government struggled to make payments on the debt he had taken on. Under heavy pressure and after months of negotiations with the Chinese, the government handed over the port and 15,000 acres of land around it for 99 years in December.
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WNU Editor: When it comes to China and money .... there are always strings attached. And for a country like Sri Lanka .... where almost all government revenues go to servicing its international debts .... they are especially vulnerable in being forced to "make deals". The Sri Lankan port in question .... to make any sense of it .... will eventually be used by the Chinese military, thereby breaking all of the agreements that Sri Lanka had made with its neighbors that it would not permit the militarization of the port. But Sri Lanka is not the only country caught in this trap. As the New York Times has revealed, there are numerous ports around the world that have been financed the same way.
