China willing to promote strategic cooperative partnership with Sri Lanka: Chinese FM
Posted on July 12th, 2025
Source: Xinhua

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets with Sri Lankan Minister of Foreign Affairs Vijitha Herath in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, July 12, 2025. (Xinhua/Cheng Yiheng)
KUALA LUMPUR, July 12 (Xinhua) — China is willing to work with Sri Lanka to promote a strategic cooperative partnership based on sincere mutual assistance and a lasting friendship, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Saturday when meeting his Sri Lankan counterpart Vijitha Herath.
Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that China and Sri Lanka have a traditional friendship. The two heads of state held fruitful talks and reached an important consensus on deepening bilateral strategic cooperative partnership and jointly building a China-Sri Lanka community with a shared future, which pointed out the direction and provided guidance for the development of bilateral relations.
Wang pointed out that China is a reliable partner of Sri Lanka, and the two sides should deepen high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and practical cooperation in various fields.
The two sides should work together to effectively implement the two flagship projects of the Colombo Port City and the Hambantota Port, accelerate negotiations for China-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement, and create new growths for cooperation in such areas as green energy, digital economy, modern agriculture, and marine economy, Wang said.
He pointed out that China-Sri Lanka maritime cooperation is mutually beneficial, not aimed at third parties, and should not be interfered by third parties.
China is willing to strengthen coordination with Sri Lanka in such platforms as the ASEAN Regional Forum to jointly maintain stability and development in the region, he noted, adding the so-called “Indo-Pacific Strategy” provokes bloc confrontation and coerces parties to take sides, which is not in line with the trend of the time and will not receive support from regional countries.
Herath, for his part, said that Sri Lanka attaches great importance to its relations with China and firmly adheres to the one-China principle. Sri Lanka thanks China for its firm support for Sri Lanka in safeguarding its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and for its timely assistance during difficulties.
Sri Lanka-China cooperation has brought great benefits to the Sri Lankan people and has effectively promoted the overall development and connectivity of the region, said Herath, adding that Sri Lanka is willing to work with China to implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state, strengthen practical cooperation in various fields, including the economy, trade, investment, infrastructure, and maritime affairs, and further deepen the strategic cooperative partnership.
July 14th, 2025 at 2:23 am
I did my Phd with a renowned researcher Prof Huang Guang-bin from China and this is my experience with working with him and his team Phd candidates. I think this insight might be helpful when working with Chinese.
Prof Huang Guang-bin team consisted of 4 managing persons, where Prof Huang Guang-bin was called the Boss, and there is a person called the Son (Putha), another person called manager, and finally a person called Shifu. Boss will give a general direction of a research or project which was fanciful most of the time. Son would analyze Boss’s research or project by performing a literature review followed by a proposal. Son will basically do the feasibility study and the manager will try to allocate resources by looking at the available budget to the team to execute research or project. So there will be multiple research/ project plans at hand. Shifu will look at all the proposal and budget allocations to determine which research/ project to pursue and allocate the tasks to the remaining team members (about 4-5 members) and them selves. The total team is about 9-10 members.
The interesting thing as a outsider (me) I have to talk and persuade all 4 mangers in the team (boss, son, manager and shifu) to get my research/ project done. Even though according to university policy (I did my PhD at NTU Singapore) such approval is not required. Furthermore, Son, manager and shifu are all Phd candidates.
Just bringing awareness whether this is the case in projects such as Highways etc.