Recently, China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs visited Sri Lanka, met with President Ranil Wickremesinghe, and invited him to China for a conference on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Sri Lanka’s President last visited China on May 14, 2019. Then, President Maithripala Sirisena travelled to China to attend a conference and met with the Chinese President. Following that, Gotabaya, who became president, was invited to visit China, but he declined. He initially refused to visit China due to the Covid, but later avoided China by travelling to other countries. This made China extremely uneasy.
After Ranil became the President, China invited Ranil to visit the country, but Ranil stayed until he received an invitation from India. The Chinese vice minister, who recently visited Sri Lanka, invited Ranil to come for a conference in China. Ranil had gone to a conference in Japan before that, and China must have thought that attending a conference in China would be easy for Ranil .
There was no mention of debt restructuring in the official announcements issued after the Chinese vice minister met with President Ranil. It only stated that China would give maximum support to Sri Lanka to recover from the economic crisis. Ranil may be trying to go to China to discuss debt restructuring.
Former finance ministry secretary P.B. discussed debt restructuring with China even before Sri Lanka went bankrupt. That was in 2014. 2014 Chinese President came to Sri Lanka and before that P.B. Jayasundara made a request from China’s Exim Bank to restructure the loan taken to build the Hambantota port. Although the Mahinda Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka at that time was a close friend of China, China did not agree to the debt restructuring request. Instead, they wanted to sign agreements to further develop Hambantota port and cover the loss.
In 2015, Mahinda’s government lost the presidential election. In 2017, then Prime Minister Ranil went to China and asked for loan relief. But China rejected it. Then Special Projects Minister Sarath Amunugama revealed this in Parliament on August 16, 2017. He said this about China’s response to debt relief.
We had lent to many countries in the world. If we give debt relief to Sri Lanka, 30-40 will ask for same treatment.
This time, Ranil is going to ask for the restructuring of the Chinese debt after Sri Lanka bankrupted. China’s position in 2014 is unlikely to change in 2023. China is playing a game of ‘Hide and Seek’ on Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring. Ranil too until he win the next election, playing a cat and mouse game with I.M.F. India, China and Japan.
