Chinese leader Xi Jinping said relations between China and Sri Lanka faced a “historical opportunity” to foster ties, in talks with the island nation’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Wednesday.
“China-Sri Lanka relations face a historic opportunity to build further and move forward,” Xi told Dissanayake at the bilateral meeting in Beijing, according to public television channel CCTV.
The two sides view their relations from a “strategic attitude and build a China-Sri Lanka network with a shared future. “
Leftist Dissanayake’s stop in China comes after President Narendra Modi gave him a red carpet welcome in India on his first foreign holiday as prime minister in December.
Dissanayake arrived in September and consolidated his strength after winning a landslide victory in November’s snap parliamentary elections.
China and India are competing for the Indian Ocean region.
Sri Lanka straddles the world’s busiest shipping route, connecting the Middle East and East Asia, giving it strategic maritime importance.
But Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign loans in 2022, a crisis that led to months of food, fuel and medicine shortages.
China accounted for more than half of Sri Lanka’s bilateral debt at the time of the economic crash.
In December 2017, unable to repay a huge Chinese loan, Sri Lanka ceded its southern port of Hambantota to a Beijing company on a 99-year lease for $1. 12 billion, raising questions about Chinese investments in the country.
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