{"id":103078,"date":"2020-06-01T16:23:52","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T23:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=103078"},"modified":"2020-06-01T16:24:50","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T23:24:50","slug":"could-china-help-sri-lanka-to-be-a-developed-nation-part-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/06\/01\/could-china-help-sri-lanka-to-be-a-developed-nation-part-b\/","title":{"rendered":"COULD CHINA HELP SRI LANKA TO BE A DEVELOPED NATION? (PART B)"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

International news of CNN published that China is becoming to replace the USA in international aid, the total Chinese aid from the year 2000 to 2014 was US $ 354 billion of which a quantum of aid has gone to African nations where combinedly received the US $ 32 billion for 704 projects. Many African countries with rich mining resources were under the rule of European countries, which indiscriminately exploited them but never provided such huge economic supports.\u00a0 An assistant professor of Politics at the University of British Columbia University found in research that Chinese aid was more attractive to developing countries because no political strings attached Chinese aid which quickly and efficiently disbursed than the assistance from Western nations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current Chines Leader Xi Jinping\ninitiated many changes in the Chinese economy after the election to the\nleadership in 2012 and China’s party conference, Mr. Xi Jinping indicated that\nhis willingness to opening its economy further to the world and CNN pointed out\nthat Huge sums are also expected to be channeled into Xi\u2019s grand plan for\nbuilding up roads, ports and other infrastructure along the historic silk\nroad\u201d trading routes across Asia, Europe, and Africa. Dubbed the belt and road\ninitiative it aims to create a growing trade network with China at its heart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China has played a critical role in\nthe Asian region\u2019s economic development and the growth objectives of all\ncountries in the region are being dependent on the Chinese economy because\nChina has involved in trade with all countries. \nSri Lanka had a close relationship with China for a long period and the\nrelationship had a broader feature such as religious, cultural exchanges, and\nthe supports for infrastructure development of the country.  The impartial American analysis is that\nChinese aid supported to a 0.4% increase in world economic growth.  Many developing countries concerned about the\neffects of Western aid in pushing for political reforms.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People in Sri Lanka observed that\nafter the defeat of the Rajapaksa regime in 2015 Western nations push for a new\nconstitution, the abolition of the power of the elected president, and changing\nthe election system in the country. The advice directed to Sri Lanka after 2015\ncreated a constitutional mess and the court system has become one of the\njustice systems that involved in jurisdiction matters of inutile case\nhearing.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experience after the local\ngovernment election in 2018 showed that the 19th amendment to the constitution\nmade under the advice of the Western countries pushed Sri Lanka into a\npolitical and administrative mess.  \nPeople of Sri Lanka do not like such a by force pushing to change the\npolitical system. As impartial American analysis indicates Chinese supports is\nsignificant to lift the economic growth to more than 7%.  During the Rajapaksa regime, China helped Sri\nLanka to maintain a higher economic growth but under the Sirisena\n-Wickramasinghe regime the growth has declined to 3.2%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The Western rulers in Sri Lanka bought\ndemocratic political principles to the country but they were unable to win the\nhearts of people as the motives of Western rulers involved in a secret agenda\ndestroying the religious and cultural values of the country, which were rooted\nin Sri Lanka’s society during many centuries. \nOne of the examples that people did not trust in the Western values was\nthe story written by Lenard Wolf in the Village in the Jungle.  Lenard Wolf, who was a British administrator\nin the Southern Province of Sri Lanka, clearly indicated how the democratic\njustice system of Western rulers did work against the poor Sri Lankans.  Justice means justice which should be equal\nto everybody but the British justice system has failed to give justice to a\npoor person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The democratic values bought to Sri\nLanka were vital to changing society. \nDespite the purpose of democratic values, Western rulers attempted to\ninterpret values in different ways and used the values to divide society.  Western rulers in Sri Lanka did not support\nfor achieving the dream of people. It seems that people of Sri Lanka would\nnever see Western democratic philosophy as a superior doctrine and many views\nthat democratic philosophy divided the unity of the country and deranged the\ncommunity.  A former Indian foreign\nsecretary commented in a book written by him that the last period of civil war\nin the country, Norway wanted to stop the killing of Prabhakaran and allow the\nterrorist leader to kill more people in the country.  Many occasions Western countries promised to\nprovide financial support for the economic revival of Sri Lanka but they never\nprovided support as promised.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the 2015 election, Mr. Ranil\nWickramasinghe who strongly opposed to Chinese assistance and later people saw\nthat he was bow down to China looking for assistance. Some English journalists\nin Sri Lanka were of opinion that Mr. Wickramsinghe’s hate speeches against\nChinese aid and China caused many negative consequences to Sri Lanka after the\n2015 elections. After the election results, many Chinese aid projects were\nhalted by the new government, and several big projects were later changed as\nthe way China wanted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Korean boom Sri Lanka had\nan opportunity to manage a good trade balance but when the boom ended the\ncountry faced the most critical issues in the economy.  It had an excess production of rubber and a\nshortage of staple food rice.  At that\ntime. China embarked on Sri Lanka as a survivor of the economy through China Sri\nLanka rubber rice pact, which was initiated by RG Senanayake despite the opposition\nof JR Jayawardene within the cabinet. \nMany Western countries or India did not come to help Sri Lanka during\nthat difficult period. People cannot blame to India as it had many problems\nwith a higher population. In the late 1990s prof. Dudley Seers severely\ncriticized the China-Ceylon Rubber Rice Pact and gave a  very bad picture of the bilateral agreement.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the China-Sri Lanka rubber rice\npact, which was a bilateral aid agreement, China extended supports to Sri Lanka\nin a variety of aid packages and India looked at them with a negative point of\nview because Indian attitudes towards neighboring countries were based on\nhegemony rather than friendship and coexistence between countries. It may\ninfluence international politics. Under the administration of the current prime\nminister in India, the attitudes of foreign policymakers toward neighboring\ncountries wanted to change but it does not appear that India has radically\nchanged its attitudes toward neighbors. However, after the election of Mr.Gotabaya\nRajapaksa, India has made an innate change toward the style of administration\nof Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a country is seeking economic\nsupports from another country it needs understanding that the supports are\nsuccessfully working and sustain if it contains mutual benefits to both\ncountries.  When Sri Lanka seeks supports\nfrom China Sri Lanka needs support to China in return for the benefits gain.  A traditional Sinhala saying was that if anyone\ndrank water from a river and attempt to praise the ocean for that advantage\ngained it is not the way of expressing gratitude.  The experience in Sri Lanka shows that it\nobtained support from China in many instances but the country did not attempt\nto express the gratitude in right ways. \nFor example, after the civil war, Sri Lanka faced a grave international\nsituation with human rights issues and war crimes investigations.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS International news of CNN published that China is becoming to replace the USA in international aid, the total Chinese aid from the year 2000 to 2014 was US $ 354 billion of which a quantum of aid has gone to African nations where combinedly received the US $ 32 billion for 704 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}