Sino-Indian Competition in the Indian Ocean Region Intensifies - The Diplomat, 16 October 2020

In my third column for The Diplomat, I looked at the Sino-Indian competition in the Indian Ocean Region.  As competition intensifies in the Region, India loses touch with Sri Lanka and solidifies relations with the Maldives.  

India has recently faced some stiff competition from China for influence in its South Asian neighborhood. China’s increasingly visible footprint in Sri Lanka since the return of the Rajapaksas has made India’s position a little shaky. While New Delhi’s relations are being put to the test in one Indian Ocean state, India has had better luck with the Maldives, another key state in the region. 

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With the Rajapaksas back in office, Sri Lanka appears to be once again on the verge of rebuilding a stronger Sri Lanka-China relationship. Last week, a group of senior officials led by top foreign policy official Yang Jiechi, a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo and the director of the Central Committee’s Foreign Affairs Commission, its top policymaking body, visited Sri Lanka. The visit was part of a four-nation tour by Chinese officials, which included visits to the UAE, Algeria and Serbia. 

In a statement, Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry reportedly lauded this “first ever Chinese visit in the South Asian region since the global coronavirus epidemic,” and looked forward to strengthening cooperation between Sri Lanka and China, “in the areas of combating the global pandemic and revival of economic relations.” The high-powered delegation met with both President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo.  

Since the Rajapaksas returned to power, China-Sri Lanka relations have been warming up. Following Mahinda Rajapaksa’s landslide victory, China welcomed him as the prime minister and pledged complete support, stating that “Beijing looks forward to advancing its strategic cooperative partnership with Colombo.” After he took office, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian stated during a press briefing that two countries enjoyed a “traditional friendship” and that the two have been advancing their “strategic cooperative partnership based on sincere mutual assistance and ever-lasting friendship.” 

China’s influence in Sri Lanka will remain a cause of concern for India. The Rajapaksas have been generally perceived as close to China. The fact that the Hambantota Port development was given to China by Mahinda Rajapaksa during his previous term in office as president continues to be a sore point for India. While this has been worrying enough, that the Sri Lankan government signed the Hambantota Port to China on a 99-year lease is even more of a concern in New Delhi.

With China giving high-profile attention to Sri Lanka, Colombo is slowing down some of its planned projects with India and Japan. Reports have suggested that China believes that Colombo must maintain some distance from New Delhi and Tokyo. Accordingly, Sri Lanka has decided to pause or slow down some of the development projects involving India and Japan, such as a Japanese-funded light rail project and the East Container Terminal (ECT) project in Colombo, which is backed by both Japan and India. In the latter case, this came despite the fact that the three countries signed an MoU for the project more than a year ago. Since the recent change in political dispensation in Colombo, there is no assurance that these projects will go through. 

In contrast, India appears to have got a bit of a breather in the Maldives. In fact, the Maldives may be one of a couple shining spots for India in its immediate neighborhood. India has been pitching a number of economic, connectivity and capacity-building projects in the Maldives. While many of the recently announced projects are economic in nature, the Indian objective is to limit China’s footprint in India’s backyard. Earlier in the week, the EXIM Bank of India entered into a line of credit agreement for $400 million for the Greater Male Connectivity Project. This is reportedly the largest of the infrastructure projects in the Maldives, connecting Villingili, Gulhifalhu and Thilafushi islands. This comes in addition to $100 million that India has promised for the project, which involves the construction of a 6.7-kilometer bridge and causeway network linking Male with the other three atolls. It is reported to be second most important connectivity project in the Maldives, after the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge linking the airport island of Hulhule with the capital’s island.

India announced its assistance for the project in a virtual meeting between External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid in August. Thanking India for this assistance, the Maldivian foreign minister tweeted, “The Greater Male Connectivity Project will lead to greater possibilities. It is the gateway to a more developed & economically resilient nation.” The current assistance package comes in addition to a previous line of credit of $800 million, which is one of the largest loan packages that India has given to any nation in its  neighborhood.

Earlier in July, India also gave the Maldives a symbolic check providing assistance for nine projects, through the High Impact Community Development Projects (HICDP) scheme. India has signed several bilateral MoUs for the construction of fish processing and bottled water plants, and the establishment of tourism zones. Prior to this, New Delhi had offered Male $400 million through an extended currency swap arrangement in order to deal with its liquidity crisis. India is also reported to have granted the Maldives $1.4 billion in budgetary aid to negate the adverse economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Things have turned around for India in the Maldives since the 2018 elections, when Ibrahim Mohamed Solih was elected president. But another change in political dispensation could just as easily sour relations with India. So, while things are still working in its favor, India is trying to do its best to bring Male under its wing. Whether these aid and assistance efforts can maintain a positive role for India in Male over the longer term is unclear. But for the time being, the Maldives remain a relative success story for Indian diplomacy. More importantly, the course of events suggests that competition with China has forced India to up its diplomatic game in the region. 

Sri Lanka’s Role in Sino-Indian Competition in South Asia - The Diplomat, 28 January 2020

In this week's column for The Diplomat, I examined the role of Sri Lanka in the Sino-Indian competition in South Asia. The country continues to be a prime area of competition for both Asian powers in the South Asia region.

How China and India will manage their bilateral relations, even as their competition intensifies, remains a major question, with implications for their ties as well as the wider region. At the Raisina Dialogue earlier this month, India’s external affairs minister, Dr. S Jaishankar, said that finding accommodation with China “is a must; it is not a choice… We have to get along with each other.” Jaishankar recognized, as he put it, that “it is work-in-progress and it will continue to be work-in-progress because both powers are very dynamic.”

Nowhere is this arguably more difficult than in the South Asian region, which has been so far dominated by India. China has tried hard to woo various neighbors of India including Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and Myanmar. These all are countries which have had closer ties with India but because of the proximity, have also felt dominated by New Delhi. Nevertheless, India has also tried hard to make sure that these countries did not fully fall under China’s sway.

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Sri Lanka is a prime area of competition. And we have seen this playing out over the past few weeks, particularly as senior officials from both countries made their way to Sri Lanka to woo the newly-elected government of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

China’s growing role in Sri Lanka has been widely documented, particularly its significant investment in Sri Lankan infrastructure. But these have also been controversial even within Sri Lanka because some of the terms of China’s loans with which these infrastructure projects have been built has been quite unfavorable. Indeed, the Hambantota port has now become a prime example of the perils of what has come to be termed as China’s debt-trap diplomacy.

More broadly, China’s presence in Sri Lanka and the terms of its investments became a controversial issue in the last elections in Sri Lanka. Gotabaya campaigned that he would renegotiate the deal that allowed China to lease Hambantota for 99 years, a controversial deal that was made by the Sirisena Government, but one which had raised a lot of objections within the country. Despite such promises, once he was elected, Rajapaksa appears to have gone back in challenging China’s hold on Hambantota. Instead, he called upon other important players including India, Singapore, Japan, Australia, and ASEAN countries to invest in Sri Lanka.

How the new government balances India and China is clearly of importance to both New Delhi and Beijing. As if to illustrate that, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi visited Colombo last week. While it appears to have been more of a goodwill visit, Beijing will no doubt also continue to be concerned about Rajapaksa’s rhetoric during the election campaign. Seen from that perspective, Wang Yi probably wanted to ensure that there would be no damage to China’s political and financial investments under the new government.

If that is so, he has reasons to be satisfied. According to the Chinese foreign ministry statement, “China will continue to firmly support Sri Lanka in safeguarding its sovereignty and national dignity.” But at the same time, the statement also noted that “China-Sri Lanka cooperation has never targeted at any third party and also it should not be affected by any third party.” It doesn’t take much to guess which third party that China is referring to here.

Not to be outdone, India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval made a beeline for Colombo just a few days after Wang Yi left. The previously unannounced visit appears to have been cordial, with the two sides discussing strengthening bilateral cooperation on national security, intelligence sharing and regional cooperation. India and Sri Lanka have had several high-level exchanges even since Rajapaksa’s election in November 2019. His first foreign visit was to India in November. His brother and now Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa is to visit New Delhi in early February.

Both China and India are clearly attempting to ensure that they do not lose out to the other when it comes to currying favor with the new regime in Colombo. At the same time, is unlikely that Colombo will pick one side or the other because it makes more sense for it to get China and India continue to woo it with gifts and attention, which will stop if Sri Lanka makes a choice. Thus, even as India and China compete, Sri Lanka has every incentive to keep both parties in play so as to benefit from both.

China and India too certainly recognize the dynamic at play. But they will also recognize that they have little choice but to keep up the game given the broader geopolitical dynamics at play. Neither side can win unless they abandon the field, which of course neither side will do.

What Will Rajapaksa’s Return Mean for India-Sri Lanka Relations? - The Diplomat, 27 November 2019

Last week, I wrote two pieces for the Diplomat. The first one, What Will Rajapaksa’s Return Mean for India-Sri Lanka Relations?, looked at how the new political leadership in Sri Lanka impact upon India-Sri Lanka relations.

The November 18 swearing in of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the new president has brought the Rajapaksa family back into the political limelight in Sri Lanka. It has also spotlighted some of the potential security implications of their return to power.

As the defense secretary from November 2005 to January 2015, Rajapaksa was seen as a strong leader who put an end to the nearly 30-year-old civil war in the country. Once in office, Rajapaksa promptly chose his elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, former two-term president himself, as his prime minister.

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The return of the two Rajapaksas in the recent polls is not surprising against the backdrop of the bombings in Sri Lanka in April, which killed more than 250 people and injured more than 500. The Easter bombings in churches and luxury hotels in Colombo and elsewhere brought back fears of terrorism taking roots again in the island nation. The Easter bombings also brought a fresh wave of Sinhala nationalism and Islamophobia, which was evident in the recent elections.

India, the neighboring regional great power, is likely to be worried because the Rajapaksas are seen as being sympathetic to China. However, the new president has made repeated statements that his government would like Sri Lanka to be a “neutral country” and that “Sri Lanka won’t do anything that will harm India’s interests.” Gotabaya was also critical of the previous government giving Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease to China and said, “We have to renegotiate.” He went on to add that giving land as investment for developing a hotel or a commercial property was not a problem but “the strategically important, economically important harbor, giving that is not acceptable.”

While this rhetoric may be read as reassuring to some, it is too early to say with certainty how Gotabaya will balance India and China. As is the customary practice, the president will travel to New Delhi on November 29, making India his first foreign visit after assuming office. India has also been proactive on Sri Lanka, with India’s External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar being sent to meet with Gotabaya, with a personal invitation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit India.

The anxieties about the Rajapaksas come from how their past behavior toward China is perceived in New Delhi, and they will not be easily quelled. Despite his current criticism of the Hambantota deal, Mahinda was the one who initiated the deal for developing Hambantota port in 2007 when he was president. The port also happens to be in his parliamentary constituency. While it should be noted that the port development offer was initially made to India and then handed to China, that has not affected the extent of Indian concern. Chinese nuclear submarines also made port visits to Colombo port in 2014, which caused great consternation in India.

More broadly, China’s deep pockets are evident in the number of economic and infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka, including investments in the Colombo International Financial Center, Colombo-Kandy highway, oil refineries, and a $1.4 billion port city next to the Colombo port. India has its own list of pending Sri Lankan development projects that it wants to be part of, including an LNG terminal in Kerawalapitiya near Colombo, a 50-100 MW solar power plant and development of an oil tank farm in the eastern district Trincomalee and the East Container Terminal at the Colombo port.

These concerns notwithstanding, there clearly has been an effort by both India and Sri Lanka to patch up their ties. After Mahinda’s defeat in the 2015 elections, Modi visited Sri Lanka in 2015, 2017, and June 2019, and, each time, Modi made it a point to meet Mahinda. Similarly, Modi also met him in September 2018 when Mahinda and his son visited India. On the Rajapaksas’ side too, there appears to be earnest interest in improving relations, at the very least due to the fact that Mahinda wants to create the perception that he is moving away from an earlier China tilt to equidistance between India and China.

The China question is only part of the recalibration that will be needed to get India-Sri Lanka relations on the right track. Indian interests in Sri Lanka are also driven by other important factors, including post-war reconciliation and respect for the dignity of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka and its cultivation of ties in its immediate neighborhood and the wider Indian Ocean. As a result, New Delhi will be watching carefully how the new Rajapaksa government’s tenure plays out both at home and abroad in Sri Lanka.

But beyond what Sri Lanka does, India will also need to do its part as well. Rather than focusing on building the case against China, New Delhi must step up its efforts to show what it is for. India can never match Beijing’s economic wherewithal to make a difference to Colombo’s developmental requirements. But it can carve out a niche role in some areas and also partner smartly with likeminded strategic partners like Japan to make an economic and strategic difference in Sri Lanka.