Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa meets with Chinese workers at
the Hambantota Port Development Project site. (Picture by Sudath Silva)
On October 31, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa presided over a ceremony held to mark the beginning of construction on the Hambantota port, 150 miles southeast of the capital city of Colombo. Also present at the event were the Chinese ambassador to Sri Lanka and Chinese engineers involved in the project. One day earlier, China’s Exim Bank had signed an agreement to provide the Sri Lankan government with a credit of $360 million for the Hambantota project, which will include a jetty, an oil terminal, a container port, a bunkering system, an oil refinery, and other facilities. The total cost is projected to be around US$1 billion, 85 percent of which will be financed by Beijing. Official Chinese media coverage of the project has been low-key. China’s online community, however, has been paying quite a bit of attention. An article titled “India panics as China plies open its southern gate Sri Lanka,” author unknown, has been posted on numerous websites and blogs. The article begins with a statement by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang that the Hambantota port agreement is commercial in nature. It also presents information and analysis gleaned from various foreign press reports, including this Asia Times piece, which quotes analysts as referring to Hambantota as the latest addition to the geopolitical “string of pearls” that Beijing is building along the littorals of the Indian Ocean. The “India panics” article goes on to list other so-called “pearls.” It observes that from Gwadar in Pakistan to Chittagong in Bangladesh, to Sittwe and Coco Island in Myanmar, Beijing has been involved in the building and upgrading of ports, naval bases, and surveillance facilities. It states further, without elaboration, that the “string of pearls” continues beyond Thailand and Cambodia. The March 20 opening of the Gwadar port was the subject of much attention in the Chinese press. Reports at the time emphasized how Gwadar, as an “energy corridor” that will facilitate 60 percent of the oil and natural gas transshipments between China, Central Asia, and the Middle East, has raised Beijing’s “security coefficient” and its clout in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. One such report quoted the Asia Times as saying that Gwadar is a pearl that China has cultivated since 2001 because of its strategic importance. A little more than a week later, however, the International Herald Leader, a publication run by the official Xinhua News Agency, ran a piece to “debunk the rumor” that China is set to construct a strategic “string of pearls.” Tracing this portrayal of Beijing’s motives to the Pentagon, the article characterized it as a “new wave of offense aimed at ‘demonizing’ China.” Subsequently, on April 3, Global Times, a daily affiliated with People’s Daily, ran a story titled “The United States still suspicious of the Gwadar Port for no reason.” The piece dismissed as “pure fiction” speculation by Washington that Beijing harbored “strategic intentions” towards Gwadar. China’s investment in what is now an economically thriving fishing town is depicted as having been based on commercial, rather than geopolitical, considerations. Perhaps.
