A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Friday, August 11, 2017
Sri Lanka: Hambantota is next Shanghai if ..!
Hambanthota: City of the global power players
Shanghai; City of China’s prosperity
Hambantota has been the cynosure of all big powers, ever since the West woke up to the reality of a rising China a decade and a half ago. China’s rise as a maritime power has unnerved the United States and India.
( August 10, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The
Hambantota port has seen a sea a criticism ever since the then Mahinda
Rajapaksa government laid the foundation for it in 2010. In comparison,
any opposition to last Saturday’s agreement between the Sri Lanka
government and China Merchants Port Holdings seems like a drizzle in the
middle of an ocean.
Given the international attention the port deal has been receiving, one
cannot rule out the possibility of a foreign hand behind the protests.
The danger of Sri Lanka becoming an unwitting victim of international
power rivalries is apparent.
Caveats apart, last Saturday’s deal was the best of the worst options
before the Government to overcome the debt crisis – a legacy it had
inherited from the Rajapaksa regime.
The deal was a welcome relief in adverse circumstances – an “any port in a storm” situation.
The port deal is a gamble that is worth the risk. The final outcome and
the benefits could far outweigh negative consequences the protesters and
pessimists portray. They fear, rightly or otherwise, that Sri Lanka may
be dragged into a regional or even global conflict.
To say that the Hambantota port has become the fulcrum of the Indian Ocean security debate is an understatement.
Situated at the southern tip of Sri Lanka, the harbour is a vantage
point. The sea southward from Hambantota extends, without being claimed
by any country, all the way to Antarctica. Whoever controls Hambantota,
therefore, will control a large part of the southern hemisphere and the
Indian Ocean, through which transit more than 80 percent of the world’s
seaborne trade in oil.
Hambantota has been the cynosure of all big powers, ever since the West
woke up to the reality of a rising China a decade and a half ago.
China’s rise as a maritime power has unnerved the United States and
India. They see China’s Road-and-Belt Initiative is not only about trade
but also about a strategy aimed at enhancing its military power and
undermining the traditional security role of the US and India in the
Indian Ocean region.
Critics say most ports China builds across the world are dual purpose
facilities, meaning they can be used for commercial and military
activities. Hambantota, a key port in China’s Road-and-Belt initiative,
is one such facility, they say. To support their argument, they point to
the 2014 visit of a Chinese submarine and a warship to the Chinese
built terminal at the Colombo port. In case of a war between China and
the US or between India and China, Sri Lanka’s Chinese controlled ports
could become China’s naval bases, they say.
Have no such fears. With certainty, it can be said that nuclear powers
will not go to war. Take heart from Wednesday’s US statement offering
peace talks with North Korea. It came days after the maverick regime
carried out a successful test of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
capable of hitting the US mainland.
The deterrent value of nuclear weapons is one of the key factors why the
Third World War has still not happened. For nearly two months, China
and India have been bogged down in a face-off in the Himalayas. But
neither wants to start a major war. Nuclear powers may find themselves
in warlike situations, but will not go to war, unless insane leaders
take control of affairs. This is why China and the US have not gone to
war over the South China Sea disputes.
With war between ‘responsible’ nuclear powers being only a distant
possibility, fears about Hambantota port being used as a naval base
against Sri Lanka’s will, despite security-related provisions in the
agreement, have little validity. However, the possibility of the
installation being used as listening post cannot be ruled out.
Security is a crucial aspect in port deals with foreign companies. In
2006, the United States stopped a move to hand over the management of
six key ports to Dubai Ports World which won the tender. This was after
protests from those who harboured fears that terrorists could easily
infiltrate into the US if its ports were managed by Arabs.
In view of these concerns, the best approach is to bring in more
safeguards into the agreement with regard to security matters and remain
friends with all big powers. Sri Lanka can take lessons from Greece,
Turkey, Australia and Djibouti. Nato member Greece, in a debt crisis
much worse than that of Sri Lanka, has sold its Piraeus port to China
and allows People Liberation Army vessels to call over. Piraeus is one
of Europe’s largest ports.
Turkey, another Nato member, has entered into a joint venture with two
Chinese port companies, one of them being China Merchants Port Holdings,
to develop container terminals in two strategic ports.
In Australia, another key US ally, the regional government in Northern
Territory, has handed over a commercial port in Darwin to a Chinese
company on a 99-year lease. The US, which has a military base in Darwin,
raised security concerns, but the regional government stood by its
decision despite Canberra’s reservations.
Djibouti, on the other hand, has gone to another extreme. It makes the
most of its strategic value on Africa’s Indian Ocean coast by allowing
any big power to set up bases. It sells its strategic value to
strengthen its economy. The US, France, China and now Saudi Arabia have a
military presence in this small Horn-of-Africa nation.
In Pakistan, China has gained the controlling stakes in the strategic
port of Gwadar, which is, like Hambantota, a key link in China’s
One-Belt-One-Road Initiative, though it has made India feel insecure.
Indian analysts have described China’s presence in ports in countries
around India as a “string of pearls’ that undermines India’s dominance
in the South Asian part of the Indian Ocean.
If security issues can be handled diligently, Hambantota can even emerge
as another Shanghai. A sluggish fishing port city until the Western
colonial powers, including Britain, wrested it from China after the
First Opium War in 1842, Shanghai soon emerged as a port city and the
place to be – the Paris of the East, with the best art, the greatest
architecture, and the strongest business in Asia, not to mention its
elegant restaurants, race course, and places for vice and indulgence.
Industries boomed, financial institutions flourished and the people
prospered. The city’s economy survived the World War and the
Communist-era hardships. When China began to open up in the 1980s, Deng
Xiaoping, the father of China’s socialist-led market economy, made
Shanghai the engine of the country’s commercial renaissance. If China is
a dragon, he said, Shanghai is its head. Today Shanghai makes up one
fifth of China’s GDP.
Perhaps, Hambantota can be a Shanghai in the near future. But Sri Lanka
has to be eternally vigilant, especially in view of security concerns
and criticism that in the Road-and-Belt initiative, there are benefits
for China and only crumbs for others.
(This article first appeared in the Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka)