China’s Buddhist Diplomacy In Sri Lanka:What Is The Endgame With China, India, And America (CIA)?

By Patrick Mendis -May 14, 2013 |

Dr Patrick Mendis

Summary: The strategic players of China, India, and America (CIA) are all attempting to restore historic supremacy and legitimacy in the Indian Ocean through Sri Lanka—as if the island’s post-Eelam War’s peace dividends could benefit all stakeholders. Sri Lanka, the crown jewel of China’s multibillion dollar New Silk Road—or the String of Pearls—strategy across the Indian Ocean will be home to a $100-million plus, all-encompassing Lotus Tower. The tower, named in deference to the Buddha’s Lotus Sutra, is being paid for by Beijing. Cementing longstanding historical ties as well as reaffirming the Buddhist bonds between China and Sri Lanka, the Chinese-funded telecommunications tower is a physical manifestation of Beijing’s foreign policy slogan of a peaceful rising. The Lotus Tower shrewdly embodies a Buddhist emblem of peace; it also harkens back to the ancient power that once radiated from the Middle Kingdom. The construction of the tower in Colombo comes at a time when India and the United States have purposefully reengaged with strategic Sri Lanka to rebalance international relations and power structure in the region. With an extensive diplomatic and trade history, this millennia-old island is generating a subtle but far-reaching influence on its powerful neighbor, India, as well as both the United States and China in the new maritime theater of geopolitics and trade relations across the Indian Ocean.

No Nation is an Island

Sri Lanka has never been an island; its trade and diplomatic relations traced back to the ancient kingdoms of Asia as well as the ruling empires of Europe. Trade linkages—in the form of goods, services, and knowledge—have long connected Sri Lanka with the rest of the world, including the 1773 Boston Tea Party and the new American republic. Trade in knowledge proved more enduring and important than mere goods and services; and the Portuguese, Dutch, and British all carried Christianity to the predominantly Buddhist nation. Buddhism itself came to the island from India centuries before colonialism. Sri Lanka then acted as a magnifying conduit, diffusing Buddha’s noble teachings around the world and attracting Buddhist scholars like Chinese Monk Fa-hsien in the early fourth century, and peace activists like Army Colonel Henry Olcott of the American Civil War in the late nineteenth century, to its shores. Arab traders introduced Islam; Indian rulers promoted Hinduism. Today, Sri Lanka is a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multilingual nation. The island—with such diversity within a highly-educated and entrepreneurial population of 20 million—remains a grand central seaport in the Indian Ocean, one that has increasingly become of strategic importance to China, India, and America (CIA). As in ancient times, trade and safe passageway through the Indian Ocean have become a national security matter to each of these and other nations far and near.

In the recent past, the United States has retreated from the Indian Ocean region; in doing so, it allowed “non-traditional donors like the Chinese to fill the vacuum” in Sri Lanka in particular and the South Asian region in general. In its report, “Sri Lanka: Re-charting U.S. Strategy after the War”—known as “The Kerry-Lugar Report”—the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also presented a complete review of the failures of Washington’s approach. The report notes, “While the United States shares with the Indians and Chinese a common interest in securing maritime trade routes through the Indian Ocean, the U.S. Government has invested relatively little in the economy or the security sector in Sri Lanka.” Both China and India have attempted to fill that void by reasserting claims to restore their legitimacy and historical supremacy over Sri Lanka—a strategically located island at the southern tip of the South Asian sub-continent.

China’s New Silk Road—a strategic engagement with countries along the ancient Silk Road for largely energy security purposes—culminates with the Beijing-funded $100 million Lotus Tower situated in Sri Lanka’s largest city, Colombo. The hi-tech Lotus Tower will be the tallest structure in South Asia and the nineteenth tallest building in the world—reportedly visible from as far away as New Delhi. The iconography makes India nervous, and jealous. In the meantime, the United States is also uneasy about recent developments in this strategic maritime corridor. Beijing is likely funding the project to reflect one of the core foreign policy interests of China’s peaceful rising strategy. In the midst of this momentous Lotus Tower development, the historically Buddhist nations of China and Ceylon (Sri Lanka)—a Theravada Buddhist nation—have joined forces to distinguish their ancient connections from the majority Hindu population of India and the predominantly Christian nation of the United States. Despite widespread recognition of their political branding as the largest and most powerful democracies, India and the United States respectively represent a lesser union—by way of shared political philosophy and history—when compared to the centuries-old religious and cultural bonds that link China and Sri Lanka together.

In international affairs, nations tend to act based on self-interest. The interplay between various nations promoting their own security in world politics is a dynamic part of realpolitik; former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger defined the term as “calculations of power and national interests.” Foreign policy textbooks characterize this behavioral interplay as geopolitical realism. Former British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston captured the very essence of geopolitics when he said, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” This behavioral analysis is relevant to understanding the geostrategic CIA drama underway in the Indian Ocean region.

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