In the last few years, the question of whether China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is predatory has been ripe for debate, with some arguing the loans Beijing offers constitute a debt trap and others pointing out that the BRI is ultimately beneficial for developing countries. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, and Sri Lanka shows how.
The example often used to paint China’s BRI as nefarious is Colombo’s controversial deal to lease Hambantota port to a Chinese-majority joint venture in 2017. The mainstream view is Sri Lanka was forced to “cough up” the port of Hambantota to China after it could not repay its earlier loans. These critics see the port as a white-elephant project of a former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, with little economic benefit to the country. Some U.S. officials have even gone so far as to describe Sri Lanka as having “effectively ceded sovereignty over a key asset” when it made the deal.
