{"id":6423,"date":"2025-01-17T11:26:58","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T16:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/?p=6423"},"modified":"2025-01-18T11:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-18T16:30:09","slug":"the-leader-of-sri-lanka-navigates-the-china-india-rivalry-on-a-visit-to-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/2025\/01\/17\/the-leader-of-sri-lanka-navigates-the-china-india-rivalry-on-a-visit-to-beijing\/","title":{"rendered":"The leader of Sri Lanka navigates the China-India rivalry on a visit to Beijing\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Article – The leader of Sri Lanka navigates the China-India rivalry on a visit to Beijing<\/a>\u00a0
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article outlines Sri Lanka and China\u2019s fond relations as of a visit this month between Sri Lankan leader Dissanayake and Xi Jin-ping. This visit, as the article states, may raise tensions between India and China as they are Asia\u2019s regional rivals, and it is known that India has already tried to swoop into their southern country\u2019s economic crisis and help out. Sri Lanka\u2019s new leader, Dissanayake, was elected in September and ideologically aligns with Xi Jinping as he is a marxist-leaning President. His party\u2019s history is actually known for causing insurrections to overthrow the government in the 1980\u2019s and 1970\u2019s. Sri Lanka is in need of both India and China\u2019s support for their development and revival from their severe economic descent as they declared bankruptcy in April of 2022. At Dissanayake\u2019s visit to Beijing, both leaders agreed on a new 3.7 billion dollar oil agreement to start China\u2019s aid to Sri Lanka\u2019s infrastructure following the economy\u2019s crash. Additionally, Sri Lanka remains a key member in China\u2019s Belt and Road initiative. Securing strong relations with Sri Lanka may initially lead one to wonder what a small country that recently declared Bankruptcy could do for the Asian powerhouse. In China\u2019s perspective, however, Dissanayake just secured his country\u2019s status in China\u2019s Belt and Road initiative. All in all, this is another added country in a program meant to build up developing countries, and lead them indebted to China. Additionally, this allowed China to gain a stronger sphere of influence in south asia, the very south of it in this case. Considering this same dynamic between Pakistan and China, leaving Islamabad indebted to China and having to act under its whim politically even (considering their recent souring of relations regarding the killing of Chinese personnel,) Sri Lanka poses itself as another beneficial asset to economic and political leverage throughout the continent. In terms of Sri Lanka\u2019s national interest, I do not think they will lean too far either way, as it does not want to upset either India or China. India already has supplied Sri Lanka with food and economic aid following the economy\u2019s collapse, so Dissanayake will probably try to reap the benefits of diplomatic ties between both India and China. Overall, I think this reflects China\u2019s strategy of economic coercion, highlighting the utilization of their largest asset, their economy, and using that to gain a sphere of influence globally with developing countries. This is unlike America\u2019s past and current strategies which involve the military backing their smaller allies. This is an example of different countries using hard and soft power, China using a mix of both soft and hard with economic coercion and persuasion in getting smaller countries, like Sri Lanka, to secure deals such as the 3.7 billion dollar oil one, that\u2019ll entice such developing countries to depend on China\u2019s aid.\u00a0
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Article – The leader of Sri Lanka navigates the China-India rivalry on a visit to Beijing\u00a0 This article outlines Sri Lanka and China\u2019s fond relations as of a visit this month between Sri Lankan leader Dissanayake and Xi Jin-ping. This visit, as the article states, may raise tensions between India and China as they are Asia\u2019s regional rivals, and it… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6424,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6423\/revisions\/6424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}