BEIJING:
Chinese leader Xi Jinping said on Wednesday that relations between China and Sri Lanka face a “historic opportunity” to strengthen ties, during his talks with the island nation’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
“China-Sri Lanka relations face a historic opportunity to build on the past and move forward,” Xi told Dissanayake during the bilateral meeting in Beijing, according to the public television channel CCTV.
The two sides should view their relations from a “strategic perspective and build a China-Sri Lanka community with a shared future.”
Leftist Dissanayake’s visit to China comes after he was given a red carpet welcome in India by President Narendra Modi during his first foreign trip as prime minister in December.
Dissanayake came to power in September and consolidated his power after his party won a landslide victory in November’s snap parliamentary elections.
China and India are competing for influence in the Indian Ocean region.
Sri Lanka straddles the world’s busiest shipping route, which connects the Middle East and East Asia, giving its maritime assets strategic importance.
But Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign loans in 2022, during a crisis that caused months of shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
China accounted for more than half of Sri Lanka’s bilateral debt at the time of the economic crash.
In December 2017, unable to repay a huge Chinese loan, Sri Lanka handed over its Hambantota port in the south of the island to a Beijing company on a 99-year lease for $1.12 billion, raising questions about Chinese investments in the country.
