{"id":229462,"date":"2022-10-11T14:33:08","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T09:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=229462"},"modified":"2022-10-11T14:33:08","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T09:03:08","slug":"sri-lankas-past-is-prologue-for-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sri-lankas-past-is-prologue-for-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka’s Past Is Prologue For China"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Patrick Mendis<\/a> –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Prof. Patrick Mendis<\/p><\/div>\n

With its assertive foreign policy, China has been striving increasingly to become a maritime superpower to replace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region. It started with Beijing\u2019s historical claims to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands\u2014called Diaoyu Islands by China\u2014in the East China Sea; then China began claiming the South China Sea and building artificial islands and military bases in the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands region.<\/p>\n

Similarly, over the last 15 years, China has shrewdly been sending submarines and surveillance ships to the Indian Ocean. In Chinese literature and poetry, this body of water has historically been called the \u201cWestern Ocean<\/a><\/span>\u201d or the \u201cWest Sea\u201d since the Ming Dynasty (1429\u20131644).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Notwithstanding that it has not yet been deliberately expressed by the Chinese government, Beijing might eventually rename the Indian Ocean the \u201cWestern Ocean\u201d to impose its own lexicon, as historic pattern seems to suggest. Would it be part of President Xi Jinping\u2019s \u201cgreat rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and culture\u201d in the new era to show the dominance of China\u2019s propaganda superiority and global \u201cwolf warrior\u201d diplomacy?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Past Is Prologue<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

In the Chinese civilization, the East and South China Seas represent the two bodies of water in each of the four cardinal directions. The other two symbolic seas\u2014Lake Baikal in the north and Qinghai Lake in the west\u2014defined the boundaries of the Middle Kingdom since the second imperial Han Dynasty\u00a0(202 BC\u2013220 AD).<\/p>\n

The nomenclature of \u201cWestern Ocean\u201d or the \u201cWest Sea\u201d started with the seven historic \u201cMing Treasure Voyages\u201d of Admiral Zheng He (1371\u20131433). Demonstrating its unprecedented maritime superiority in the world\u2019s history, the Ming armada reached<\/a><\/span> more than 30 countries in the \u201cWestern Ocean\u201d from 1405 to 1433. The Ming admiral visited<\/a><\/span> Sri Lanka three times, reviving the Middle Kingdom\u2019s cultural, diplomatic, and trade relations with the island-nation of Buddhist Kingdom that dated back to the Han Dynasty.<\/p>\n

In his third voyage in 1409, Admiral Zheng erected<\/a><\/span> a Trilingual Inscription in the port city of Galle in Sri Lanka for \u201ca peaceful world built on trade.\u201d Six centuries later, President Xi Jinping made his first historic visit to the island in September 2014. He described<\/a><\/span> Sri Lanka as a \u201csplendid pearl.\u201d As part of his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Xi unveiled the Chinese-funded Colombo Port City on the land reclaimed from the Indian Ocean and signed more than 20 cooperative agreements with Sri Lanka.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With his vision of national rejuvenation, Xi has a clear mission of policy \u201cconnectivity<\/a><\/span>\u201d in the East, South, and West Sea regions that is interwoven with the thriving civilizational-state returning to its old glory.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sri Lanka and Yuan Wang 5<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The ancient Buddhist Island is pivotal to the master plan of the 2049 centennial goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the completion of its great rejuvenation. The earliest Silk Road that expanded from the Han Dynasty turned China into a cosmopolitan nation in the Tang Dynasty (618\u2013907). Throughout two millennia, the dynasties of Han, Tang, Ming, and others have enjoyed a long line of cultural, diplomatic, military, and commercial interactions with Sri Lanka. The ancient legacy has now been elevated into a new height with President Xi\u2019s \u201cChina Dream\u201d and his means of achieving it through BRI.<\/p>\n

After President Xi\u2019s visit, two military ships arrived in Colombo Harbor in October 2014, making India and the United States concerned about China\u2019s concealed intention cloaked in the BRI strategy. In its long march to historic glory, China also dispatched<\/a><\/span> its most technologically sophisticated Yuan Wang 5 \u201cspy ship\u201d to the Indian Ocean and docked it at the Chinese-built Hambantota Port in August 2022. The mission of the \u201cspy ship\u201d was officially stated as track<\/a>ing<\/span> the Chinese rocket and spacecraft launches for its manned space program, the Moon and Mars exploration missions, and the deployment of China\u2019s own satellite navigation system. For almost two decades, the ship has completed<\/a><\/span> more than 80 maritime tracking missions, sailed more than 570,000 nautical miles, and docked in many international ports in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.<\/p>\n

For China, the rejuvenation of ancient culture and the renaming of the Indian Ocean into the \u201cWestern Ocean\u201d would hardly be completed without Sri Lanka. Beijing\u2019s covert strategy towards the CCP\u2019s centennial goal is continuous but gradually \u201cphased<\/a><\/span>\u201d to advance the critically integral components of the East China Sea, the \u201creunification<\/a><\/span>\u201d Taiwan, the South China Sea<\/a><\/span>, and eventually the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n

The Stealth Missions<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

After the 19th National Congress of the CCP in 2017, President Xi declared<\/a><\/span> in a coded language that\u00a0\u201cwe must deeply understand that realizing communism is an objective that happens in a historical process. It occurs in stages, one step at a time.\u201d In May 2022, Xi again highlighted<\/a><\/span> \u201cthe importance of deepening the study of Chinese civilization to enhance historical awareness and cultural confidence of the Party and society\u201d to realize his national rejuvenation. He then added<\/a><\/span> that \u201cthe program to explore the origins of the Chinese civilization has made remarkable achievements, but there is still a long way ahead as the successes are still preliminary and phased.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the success of Beijing\u2019s great rejuvenation in the path of \u201csocialism with Chinese characteristics\u201d is purposefully gradual, strategically phased, and wordlessly coded. Thus, the rejuvenation of Chinese nation is not limited to the CCP\u2019s internal system of governance; it has now become<\/a><\/span> \u201cthe most active and positive force in global governance,\u201d said China\u2019s Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Departing from the former Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping\u2019s philosophy<\/a> <\/span>of \u201csecure our position . . . hide our capacities and bide our time,\u201d Xi\u2019s economically, diplomatically, and militarily powerful China has now embarked on its long march into the Indo-Pacific region for international glory.<\/p>\n

First,<\/b> Beijing started claiming the Tokyo-administered five uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea nearly 50 years ago. Xi intensified China\u2019s claims since Japan purchased<\/a><\/span> the islands from a private owner in 2012. Ever since, Chinese coast guard vessels and military aircrafts have regularly entered the territorial waters of the disputed Senkakus. The chain of the Senkaku Islands as well as Okinawa was part of an archipelago of the Ryukyu Kingdom (1429\u20131879) between Taiwan and Japan in the East China Sea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

China has historically asserted that its trade, cultural, and diplomatic relations have existed with the Ryukyu Kingdom\u2014a tributary state of the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty (1644\u20131912). After WWII, when Tokyo entered into a treaty alliance with Washington in 1951, the United States built 32 American military bases on Okinawa Island that played critical roles in armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq, Korea, Laos, and Vietnam.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, for more than a half-century until 1945, Japan ruled Taiwan (also known as Formosa). The United States provided the security and foreign assistance to the island until the United States Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.<\/p>\n

For China, the strategically valuable \u201cunsinkable<\/a><\/span>\u201d Taiwan and Senkaku islands would also make a difference in its historical claims and economic relations. In the midst of emerging Sino-American tensions, all these islands are of significance to China\u2014especially in a potential military conflict with Taiwan that is considered by Beijing as a breakaway province. The communist People\u2019s Republic of China has never governed the island-nation of Taiwan since the Republic of China (1912\u201349) was relocated to Taipei in 1949; however, President Xi has repeatedly claimed<\/a> <\/span>that \u201cresolving the Taiwan question and realizing China\u2019s complete reunification is a historic mission and an unshakable commitment of the Chinese Communist Party.\u201d<\/p>\n

The South China Sea Strategy<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Second<\/b>, Beijing has also claimed<\/a><\/span> the portrayal of the dotted U-shaped line engulfing the greater part of the South China Sea as its own. It was originally an \u201celeven-dashed line\u201d claimed<\/a><\/span> by the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 1946. The People\u2019s Republic of China revised<\/a><\/span> it to a \u201cnine-dashed line,\u201d which was used by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to officially declare<\/a><\/span> Beijing\u2019s claim to the South China Sea in 1958.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since President Xi came into power, China intensified the artificial island buildings in the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands region. China has now fully militarized<\/a><\/span> at least three of several islands\u2014arming them with \u201canti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems\u201d as well as \u201claser and jamming equipment and fighter jets\u201d while threatening all nations operating in the South China Sea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During Xi\u2019s first state visit to Washington in September 2015, President Barack Obama expressed concerns over the Chinese militarization of artificial islands. Xi categorically denied<\/a><\/span> any plan to establish military bases. He repeated<\/a><\/span> that the \u201cislands in the South China Sea since ancient times are Chinese territory\u201d and China has \u201cthe right to uphold [its] own territorial sovereignty and lawful legitimate maritime rights and interests.\u201d In his prepared speech at the White House, Xi cleverly outmaneuvered Obama when he reiterated<\/a><\/span> that China is committed to \u201csupport freedom of navigation and overflight of countries according to international law and the management of differences through dialogue.\u201d The Obama White House essentially followed Xi\u2019s lead and honored China\u2019s \u201cM\u00e9nlu\u00f3 Doctrine<\/a><\/span>\u201d (a transliteration of America\u2019s Monroe Doctrine) while trusting the euphemism of Chinese \u201cdialogue\u201d to deflect military conflicts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In July 2020, the Trump administration announced<\/a><\/span> China\u2019s claims and coercions are \u201ccompletely unlawful.\u201d Soon afterward, the United States for the first time sanctioned<\/a><\/span> the two dozen Chinese companies linked to the construction and militarization of \u201cthe internationally condemned artificial islands\u201d in the South China Sea.<\/p>\n

Following the initiative of President Donald Trump\u2019s China policy, the Biden administration issued<\/a><\/span> a detailed report on China\u2019s \u201cMaritime Claims in the South China Sea\u201d in January 2022. It outlined<\/a><\/span> Beijing\u2019s \u201cunlawful\u201d claims that have put China on a \u201ccollision course with the Philippines, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian nations.\u201d It also rejected<\/a><\/span> both \u201cthe geographic and historic bases for its vast, divisive map\u201d of the dashed lines.<\/p>\n

The Passage to the \u201cWestern Ocean\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Third<\/b>, Beijing has similarly launched its most ambitious maritime phase in the historically claimed \u201cWestern Ocean.\u201d It is the last frontier of the great rejuvenation for China\u2019s naval strategy in the Indo-Pacific region. The Ming history of the \u201cWestern Ocean\u201d has ostensibly been veiled but discreetly revived when President Xi inaugurated the China-backed $14 billion<\/a><\/span> Colombo Port City during his historic visit to Sri Lanka in September 2014. The Chinese company that invested $1.4 billion has been given<\/a><\/span> 43 percent of the 269-hectare (665 acres) of land reclaimed from the Indian Ocean on a 99-year lease. It is indeed noteworthy to disclose that a Chinese submarine and a warship docked<\/a><\/span> not at the Sri Lankan government-controlled port facility in the Colombo Harbor in October 2014; instead, China purposefully chose to berth them at the Colombo South Container Terminal, a facility controlled<\/a><\/span> by a Chinese developer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The decisively calibrated action of two warships in the Chinese-controlled facility has sent a symbolic but geopolitical message to Sri Lanka. The Colombo government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his ruling family had either unforeseen the Chinese art of gamesmanship or willingly ignored a futile confrontation with the family\u2019s benefactor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The entire episode has a subtle historical precedent<\/a><\/span> with the Ming-Kotte war of 1411. In his third voyage, when Admiral Zheng He\u2019s massive city-like flotilla arrived<\/a><\/span> on the island, the unexpected conflict led to the capture of the defeated King Alakeshvara and the taking of him, his family, and the inner circle back to the Imperial Ming Court in Nanjing as \u201cprisoners.\u201d Likewise, the fear of Chinese reprisal may have prompted the Rajapaksa administration to welcome the ships; however, the deliberate incident raised geopolitical concerns in India, the United States, and beyond.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi branded Sri Lanka as a \u201cdazzling pearl on the Maritime Silk Road\u201d in the southern strategy of BRI, reviving the Ming legacy of maritime superiority. The northern strategy associated with the cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty has become the Terrestrial Belt that expanded throughout the Southeast and Central Asia to Europe. The Belt is connected to the Indian Ocean by the economic corridors of oil and gas pipelines in Pakistan and Myanmar. The \u201cunsinkable<\/a><\/span>\u201d Sri Lanka is central to connecting these peripheral land-based economic corridors to China while encircling India.<\/p>\n

Belatedly beginning in 2015, the Obama administration began to revitalize<\/a><\/span> its military posture within the \u201cAsia Pivot\u201d strategy and increase<\/a><\/span> its engagement with India. The reactionary American strategy was designed to counterbalance the BRI strategy; however, the United States has long recognized<\/a><\/span> the centrality of Sri Lanka to American security and maritime interests as evidenced<\/a><\/span> by the bipartisan Kerry-Lugar Senate Report<\/a><\/span> of 2009.<\/p>\n

The Last Frontier with Yuan Wang 5<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

In August 2022, both the United States and India asked the Sri Lankan government that it not allow the Yuan Wang 5 ship to dock in Sri Lanka. With its struggle to pay the mounting debts<\/a><\/span> to China, the Colombo administration conceded to Beijing\u2019s pressure and allowed the \u201cspy ship\u201d to berth at the China-built Hambantota Port, which is similar to the Colombo Port City and has had a 99-year lease to a Chinese company since 2017.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With the increasing fear of Sri Lanka becoming a vassal state of China, both Washington and New Delhi have expressed serious security concerns over the visit of the Yuan Wang ship with advanced space and satellite tracking technologies. In its annual report to Congress in 2021, the\u00a0United States Department of\u00a0Defense stated<\/a> <\/span>that China was \u201cpursuing additional military facilities to support naval, air, ground, cyber, and space power projection\u201d and had \u201clikely considered a number of countries as locations\u201d for People\u2019s Liberation Army facilities, including Sri Lanka. Indian media\u2014Indian Express<\/i>,\u00a0Hindustan Times<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0India Today<\/i>, among others\u2014has widely described<\/a><\/span> Yuan Wang 5 as a \u201cdual-use spy ship.\u201d The Indian government responded<\/a><\/span> that it would carefully monitor any development that might have \u201ca bearing on India\u2019s security and economic interests and take all measures to safeguard them.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the signing of the joint communiqu\u00e9 for closer maritime security and defense cooperation in 2013, Sri Lanka has elevated<\/a><\/span> its bilateral \u201cstrategic partnership\u201d with Beijing to enhance China\u2019s involvement on the island\u2019s infrastructure projects. When Yuan Wang 5 docked at the Chinese-built port at Hambantota, Sri Lanka also allowed<\/a><\/span> the Chinese-built Pakistani warship to berth at Colombo Port. New Delhi quietly viewed the coincidence of a Chinese surveillance ship and a Pakistani warship permitted in Sri Lanka as double diplomatic and military strikes on India. During the Indo-Pakistan war in 1971, Sri Lanka also granted the non-Hindu Pakistan the right to utilize the Colombo airport against India.<\/p>\n

The anti-India sentiments in the majority Sinhala-Buddhist polity are deeply rooted since the times of Indian invaders to the island while the pro-Chinese attitudes are historically shared by the governing nationalistic Buddhist rulers. The current socio-political atmosphere in Sri Lanka suggests that the Buddhists and nativist leaders preferred the Buddhist-leaning China as opposed to the historical Hindu and Tamil invaders of India.<\/p>\n

The Warfare of the Minds<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

In his article in August 2022, Chinese ambassador to Sri Lanka Qi Zhenhong wrote<\/a><\/span> about the \u201cgreat history of the island\u201d and highlighted the history of aggression from its \u201cnorthern neighbor 17 times\u201d and \u201ccolonization by the west for 450 years.\u201d \u201cJust like Sri Lanka,\u201d Qi continued, \u201cChina had suffered a hundred years of humiliation from 1840 to 1949. Because of a similar dark experience, China has always been supporting Sri Lanka.\u201d Referring to the attempts by India and the United States to block the docking of Yuan Wang 5, the ambassador claimed<\/a><\/span> that Sri Lanka \u201cresisted the rude and unreasonable interference from third parties.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, China has the rights to conduct maritime and scientific research consistent with international law. Beijing reiterated<\/a><\/span> that \u201cChina is willing to work with Sri Lanka to consolidate political mutual trust and promote the healthy and stable development of relations between the two countries.\u201d In the center of crucial financial, economic, and political crisis in Sri Lanka, the rising tensions<\/a><\/span> between and among China, India, and the United States are inevitably high in geopolitics.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The Yuan Wang 5 crisis sent a chilling message to New Delhi at the time of a long-standing military standoff between India and China along their shared Himalayan border that has claimed many lives on both sides. Since Sri Lanka defaulted<\/a><\/span> on international debts earlier this year, India has provided<\/a><\/span> $4 billion in credit lines to ameliorate the food, fuel, and medicine shortages on the island. With the multi-billion dollars invested in the Chinese projects in Sri Lanka, China has increasingly larger stakes on the island for reaching its long-march strategic goal by 2049.<\/p>\n

Overall, China\u2019s expansion has been successfully phased and strategically gradual from the East and South China Seas to the Indian Ocean. As military strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu (545\u2013470 BC) counselled in his Art of War<\/i>, Beijing has thus far effectively used its ancient wisdom that \u201cthe supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.\u201d If the triumphant China dominates the Indian Ocean, Beijing might then rename it as the Western Ocean for posterity to seal the success of its \u201cgreat rejuvenation\u201d and the restoration of historic glory.<\/p>\n

*Dr.\u00a0Patrick Mendis<\/a><\/span>, a former American diplomat and a military professor in the NATO and Indo-Pacific Commands of the US Department of Defense, is a distinguished visiting professor of transatlantic relations at the University of Warsaw in Poland as well as a distinguished visiting professor of global affairs at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan. A non-resident senior fellow of the Synergia Foundation in Bangalore, India and the Taiwan Center for Security Studies in Taipei, Prof. Mendis served as a distinguished visiting professor of Sino-American relations at the Yenching Academy of Peking University in Beijing. He is a former commissioner to UNESCO and the secretariat director of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the US Department of State. The views expressed in this analysis do not represent the official positions of his current or past affiliations nor governments. This article has previously been published; it\u2019s courtesy of the Harvard International Review.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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