Sri Lanka-India-China:

Balancing regional power relations

By Kalyananda Godage

Our relations with China go back to more than a thousand five hundred years. We do have a deep-rooted relationship based on trust and mutual interests. In recent times we were one of the first countries to recognise the Peoples Republic of China. We supported China's re-entry to the UN, our relations over the years have grown stronger and stronger, today we have a variety of agreements covering economic and technical assistance. In recent years China s assistance in various forms has tripled particularly in the area of infrastructure development which had been wholly neglected since independence. Our relationship is indeed special.

China opened her economy after Deng Xiao Ping took over after the ruinous Cultural Revolution and he created and set up a social market economy which changed China and has benefitted not only China but many countries around the world.

The streets of China, when I first visited in the 1970s was crammed with bicycles and a few motor bikes but in 2013 when I last visited (my eighth visit) the roads in Beijin were crammed with cars including Lambroginis and Mercs. That is the China of today.

China has helped this country from the time of the Rubber-Rice deal. We gave them Rubber when they most needed it during the Korean War when other Rubber growing countries denied them on the orders of the US, which was fighting China in North Korea.

Attitude

This act of ours is something which the Chinese have never forgotten, they are eternally grateful, for as Chinese official once told me, had the Americans conquered North Korea, they would next have instigated and helped Taiwan to invade China and created another war situation.

Gratitude is an important value with the Chinese and this is why they worship their ancestors - and it is this value which governs her attitude towards us.

Many years ago when I accompanied the late Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar on a official visit to China, we had been asked to find out from the Chinese what we owed them for the military assistance we had received for the war and when the Minister asked the Prime Minister what we owed them, he consulted his officials and the answer virtually floored us, for the PM said We have not asked! such was their response then.

Let us not forget that our relations with China boomed after Mrs. Bandaranaike became PM she played an important role to settle the Indo-China conflict at the time of their war. China gave us the BMICH in the early 1970s.

Perhaps another event bears relating is this I was, together with the late Mervyn de Silva (intellectual and respected newspaper editor) on the Board of the BCIS; and at the meeting of the Board we told PM Mrs Bandaranaike, that the BCIS should have its own premises considering its mandate and the work we had to accomplish, and she then said the Chinese Ambassador is calling on me tomorrow and I shall speak to him - give me a note. We prepared a one page note and handed it to her, the next day both Mervyn and self were summoned to Rosmead Place and she told us that the Chiinese Ambassador had said that they would accommodate her request and the BCIS had its own building within an year.

Support

That was how the Chinese assisted us, which they have done over the years. We need to be grateful to them for the military assistance in particular we received when no western country, as stated before gave us even a bullet. We cannot also forget the support they gave us in the UN Security Council when the West, prostituted by the Diaspora, tried every means to stop the war.

Today we have a peculiar situation. The West which never assisted us even with a bullet during the war because of the dependence of many members of their legislatures for funds from the Tamil Diaspora.

We cannot forget the fact that the House of Commons met no less than six times to pass strictures on our then government in their effort to stop the war and save Prabhakaran. Perhaps they felt obliged to help the perceived under-dog. It was only China that helped us.

Today, the West hates China for many reasons including the fact that she has emerged as a world superpower, they cannot come to terms with this and the fact that they have lost their preeminent position of influence particularly in Asia and out here they appear to have tried to rope in PM Ranil Wickremasinghe to do their dirty work, but after his first statement about the Port City project, he, who is an astute and seasoned politician, realising the game the West was playing, has refused to go along.

I hope the Chinese government invites Ranil to see for himself the new China. He could then meet their leaders and understand China's external policies better.

Meanwhile let us also take into account that India and China, our two Asian cousins, with over a billion people each, are on the way to displacing the US in many respects; they today form one of the world s largest trade relationships.

China has become India s largest trading partner, with Sino-Indian trade reaching over US 50 billion today (their target is USD 100 billion!!). The two countries have border disputes but they are not irreconcilable.

Their relationship will grow in strength and we need to plug into their economies and have the closest relations with both countries and this is something we can manage with professional Diplomats, not with any Tom, Dick or Haramanis and with enlightened leaders. I conclude by recalling a statement made to me by a Chinese leader, he said we will help your country in whatever we could but we shall never do anything which would give India or any other country reason to destabilise your country.