Sri Lanka blocks arrival of Chinese military ship amid protest by India, nod given hours before Gotabaya fled

Facing pressure from India, Sri Lanka has blocked the proposed visit by a Chinese “spy vessel” to the Hambantota Port in sourthern Sri Lanka, which was scheduled to arrive next week. 

Sri Lanka Foreign Ministry has asked the Chinese embassy in Colombo to “defer” the arrival of the Yuan Wang 5, a military vessel, “until further consultations”. 

Clearances for the Yuan Wang-class vessel to berth at Hambantota port were given by the Foreign Ministry on July 12, a day before President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was driven out of office by a people’s movement, was expected to resign as he had announced.  

While the protest by India seems to have silenced the issue for a while, New Delhi remains concerned over the language used in Lanka’s communique to China, also known as “third party note”, which suggests that the issue is still open for discussion.

China had requested Sri Lanka for its permission to dock Yuan Wang 5 ship at Hambantota Port, which the latter has granted. Sri Lanka's Defence Ministry media spokesman Colonel Nalin Herath said China informed Sri Lanka they are sending the ship for surveillance and navigation in the Indian Ocean.

“Sri Lanka first disregarded India’s security interests by agreeing to let a Chinese military ship to dock at a commercial port, despite knowing that the surveillance vessel was involved in mapping the ocean floor for potential anti-submarine operations against the Indian Navy. Only after India protested Sri Lanka’s action did Colombo urge China to defer the ship’s arrival date,” said strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney. 

“Letting the Chinese military vessel dock at Hambantota would have compunded Sri Lanka’s other India-unfriendly actions since 2014, when two Chinese submarines separately docked at new, Chinese-built container terminal at Colombo Port,” he added.

In 2014, a similar situation had unfolded when two Chinese submarines docked at Hambantota Port, leading to a tense situation. Back then, Beijing had not even informed Lanka, let alone India, that they had sent a submarine. 

India had made it clear it will closely monitor "any bearing on India's security and economic interests and takes all necessary measures to safeguard them".

Other than Beijing’s continued build-up in the Indian Ocean waters, India’s has remained suspicious of its growing influence on Sri Lanka, which which owes large amounts of money to Beijing for infrastructure projects, including the USD 1.4-billion Hambantota Port.

China’s unproductive projects in Sri Lanka, including the Hambantota Port, which Beijing took over on lease as a debt swap, had come under sharp criticism. 

China, which accounts for 10 per cent of Sri Lanka’s debt, is reported to have resisted offering a debt cut, despite the latter facing an unprecedented economic crisis which led to severe shortages of fuel, cooking gas and medicines, anti-government protests and the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa last month.