chaina sri ;lanka

7/24/2019 Chaina Sri ;Lanka

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China-Sri Lanka Friendly Relationship: Historical Tradition, Realistic Dynamics

and Bright Future by Dr Wang Weihua

China and Sri Lanka are friendly and close neighbors in tradition. China-Sri Lanka

friendly relationship has a long historical tradition, the strong realistic dynamics and abright future.

Historical Development of China-Sri Lanka Friendly Relationship

China-Sri Lanka friendly relationship before the independence of Sri Lanka. A

long-term religious and cultural exchanges and commercial and trade exchanges laid

the historical foundation for the establishment and development of a long-term friendly

relations between China and Sri Lanka. China’s famous monk Faxian went to Sri Lanka

to learn Buddhism in 5th

century and a navigator of Chinese Ming Dynasty, Zheng He

successively arrived in Sri Lanka for three times in 15th

century, these are the two

landmark events in the history of exchanges between the two countries.

China-Sri Lanka friendly relationship after the independence of Sri Lanka. With

the guidance of the five principles of peaceful coexistence, the independent Sri Lanka

and the newborn People’s Republic of China worked together to promote sustainable

development of the friendly relationship between the two countries, which set up a

good example for the big and small countries to deal with their relationship on the basis

of equality, friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation. In January 1950, Sri Lanka

acknowledged the new China. In 1952, the two sides opened a new chapter in bilateral

economic and trade relationship with the signing of Sino-Lanka Rubber-Rice Pact. In

1957, the two sides formally established the diplomatic relationship.

China-Sri Lanka friendly relationship in the 21st century. Since entering the new

century, the international system and the pattern of the world are undergoing profound

changes, and China-Sri Lanka bilateral friendly relationship has shown increasingly

prominent regional and global significance. In April 2005, when then Chinese Premier

Wen Jiabao was paying a visit to Sri Lanka, the two countries announced to establish

China-Sri Lanka All-round Cooperation Partnership of Sincere Mutual Support and

Ever-lasting Friendship. In May 2013, during Sri Lanka’s President Rajapaksa’s visit to

China, both sides decided to upgrade China-Sri Lanka relationship to the Strategic

Cooperative Partnership of Sincere Mutual Support and Ever-lasting Friendship.

Realistic Dynamics of China-Sri Lanka Strategic Cooperative Partnership

The establishment and development of China-Sri Lanka Strategic Cooperative

Partnership not only originated in the political tradition of ever-lasting friendship

between the two countries, but also is closely related with the pulse of the times.

China-Sri Lanka Strategic Cooperative Partnership is provided the opportunity for



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in-depth development by the evolution of international configuration and regional

situation as well as the sufficient realistic dynamics for all-round development by their

own national strategies and development needs.

Currently, Indian Ocean’s strategic position is rising in the world politics and

global trade. Indian Ocean region has become a hot area of current international politics,especially facing the increasingly serious non-traditional security challenges, such as

piracy, terrorism, organized crime and so on. Indian Ocean is becoming more and more

important to the world economy and global trade because that it is becoming the

important energy and trade channel to connect the Asia-Pacific region which is the

center of world economic growth and the Gulf and Africa region which is the energy

and resource center. Indian Ocean is one of the regions with the most intensive sea trade

routes in the world, the petroleum route and trade channel in Indian Ocean are many

countries’ strategic lifelines including China.

With the rise of Indian Ocean’s strategic importance, the United States of America,

which has been the traditional dominating hegemony both globally and regionally since

the end of cold war, is gradually shrinking its strategic presence and investment in this

region. Because of the shale gas exploitation, the strategic importance of the Middle

East to the United States is declining. At the same time, along with the gradual

implementation of the rebalancing strategy in Asia-Pacific region, America’s naval

forces is in contraction world widely except in Asia-Pacific, the status of India Ocean in

America’s global strategy may decline. Given this context, countries in this region

would be very naturally concerned about the changes of the regional and global

situation.

As an Indian Ocean country with very unique geopolitical location, Sri Lanka hasa more and more important strategic status with the rise of Indian Ocean’s importance.

With the improvement of port and other infrastructure, Sri Lanka’s strategic importance

concerning sea-lane security and trade relations in Indian will rise further.

Enormous energy and resource requirements are raised to support China’s rapid

economic development with a high speed over the past more than thirty years. The

navigation safety in Indian Ocean is becoming China’s core national concern due to

Indian Ocean has become the most important channel for China to import oil and

resources from the Gulf and Africa. Therefore, China will definitely pay more attention

to Indian Ocean. However, China’s military presence in Indian Ocean is almost zero

besides the anti-piracy activity near to Somali. China does need to work together with

the India Ocean countries and relevant stakeholders to ensure the peace and stability in

the most busy water area in the world.

At bilateral level, there are a lot of dynamics to promote the comprehensive and

in-depth development of bilateral relationship between China and Sri Lanka.

1. On the basis of strong mutual political trust between the two countries, China



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and Sri Lanka have the similar positions on many international issues and could benefit

from the cooperation with each other to maintain their core national interests.

2. The two countries take economic development as a priority of their national

strategy.

3. China-Sri Lanka bilateral economic and trade cooperation has great potential

especially after the upcoming signing of the Free Trade Area Agreement.4. The more favorable factor to the bilateral relationship is that China put forward

the idea to create the 21 Century Maritime Silk Road. This is a friendly way of the

economic and trade cooperation and cultural exchanges in the new era. There is no

doubt, due to the unique geographical location, that Sri Lanka is facing an important

opportunity and is able to play an important role within this framework. The

comprehensive cooperation between China and Sri Lanka on the construction of the

21st Century Maritime Silk Road will not only promote the bilateral economic and

trade cooperation, but also make the bilateral cooperation with more regional and

international significance.

Outlook of China-Sri Lanka Strategic Cooperative Partnership

Based on the analysis of the history and reality, people have reasons to be full of

expectation about the future development of China-Sri Lanka Strategic Cooperative

Partnership. Although Sri Lanka does not geographically share border with China, but

China regards its relationship with Sri Lanka as an important part of its good neighbor

policy. The two countries have the consensus to work together for a bright future of the

bilateral relationship, which will not only benefits the two peoples, but also the whole

region and the world at large.

First, China and Sri Lanka should further consolidate the basis of bilateral relations,and actively promote the all-round cooperation and exchanges. Politically, the two

sides should continue to maintain close high-level exchanges. Economically, the two

sides should achieve the bilateral FTA agreement as soon as possible, enhance the scale

and level of economic and trade cooperation, change the imbalance of the trade

structure, and enlarge China’s direct investment in Sri Lanka. At the same time, the two

sides should actively promote and expand people to people exchanges. Especially on

Chinese side, the government should encourage more Chinese tourists to go to Sri

Lanka for sightseeing. In addition, the two sides should steadily push forward the

pragmatic cooperation in the fields of defense and security, and also give their firm

supports to each other in the fight against terrorism and three forces.

Second, China and Sri Lanka should further strengthen the regional and

international significance of the bilateral relations through enriching the connotation of

the strategic cooperative partnership. 1. The two sides should strengthen cooperation in

regional multilateral organizations, such as SCO, SAARC and so on. 2. The two sides

should strengthen the comprehensive cooperation in marine field, such as ecological

protection, marine economy, marine observation and so on. 3. The two sides should



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strengthen coordination on multilateral issues, such as Climate Change, UN reform and

so on. 4. The two sides should plan the bilateral economic and trade cooperation under

the framework of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road in order to constantly improve

the hub status and radiation effects of Sri Lanka to the economic and trade cooperation

in Indian Ocean.

Finally, China and Sri Lanka should further highlight the positive energy that China- Sri

Lanka Strategic Cooperative Partnership brings to the regional peace and stability as

well as the regional development. China-Sri Lanka Strategic Cooperative Partnership is

helpful to the peace and stability in the region, which is not targeted at any third country.

China has neither the so-called “Pearl Chain Strategy” nor the grand strategy to seek

Indian Ocean into China’s sphere of influence. On the one hand, China does not have

such strength because China is still a regional power rather than a global power,

although apparently China’s global interests are in rapid growth. On the other hand, the

more important reason is China has no intention of such a strategy. The road of peaceful

development is China’s national strategy and will not be shaken easily since we believe

that there is no way for China to follow the old way which the western powers have

taken when they were rising in the last 400 hundreds years. What China is pursuing in

Indian Ocean is the common security, comprehensive security, cooperative security and

sustainable security, which is also one of the guiding principles of the development of

China-Sri Lanka Strategic Cooperative Partnership. At the same time, China-Sri Lanka

Strategic Cooperative Partnership will strongly promote China’s engagement into the

regional integration in South Asia, which will be helpful to the development of the

whole region.

In conclusion, China and Sri Lanka are good friends and good partners with mutual

trust. China-Sri Lanka Strategic Cooperative Partnership has its own historicalfoundation and realistic dynamics. With deepening the bilateral pragmatic cooperation

and strengthening the regional coordination, the development of China-Sri Lanka

Strategic Cooperative Partnership will benefit the two countries as well as the whole

region and world at large.

chaina sri ;lanka

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