Silk Cage Series – Webinar VI: Ports, Power, and Political Access: China’s Strategic Grip over Sri Lanka
Is China’s engagement with Sri Lanka primarily a development partnership, or has the island become a critical maritime anchor in Beijing’s expanding power architecture across the Indian Ocean? This question lies at the heart of an increasingly contested debate. Beijing presents its investments as instruments of economic modernisation, connectivity, trade, and post-conflict development. Critics, however, argue that China has gradually converted infrastructure financing, port construction, political relationships, and elite engagement into durable forms of strategic leverage.
Sri Lanka’s location gives this debate exceptional importance. Positioned close to some of the world’s busiest maritime trade and energy routes, the island sits at the centre of the Indian Ocean’s evolving strategic geometry. For China, Sri Lanka provides more than access to a promising South Asian economy. It offers an opportunity to establish commercial, logistical, political, and potentially security-relevant footholds along maritime routes connecting China with the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.
Under the Belt and Road Initiative, China has supported a wide range of projects in Sri Lanka, including Hambantota Port, Colombo Port City, the Colombo International Container Terminal, expressways, energy infrastructure, Mattala International Airport, and the Lotus Tower. These projects have strengthened Sri Lanka’s physical connectivity, but they have also generated questions concerning economic viability, sovereign decision-making, transparency, and long-term dependence.
Hambantota has become the most visible symbol of this controversy. The port was transferred to a joint venture involving China Merchants Port Holdings under a 99-year concession following a US$1.1 billion agreement. Sri Lankan authorities have consistently described the arrangement as commercial, while strategic analysts continue to debate whether Chinese control over port operations could eventually produce dual-use advantages or facilitate a larger maritime presence. China’s approach, however, extends beyond individual ports. Hambantota, Colombo Port City, container terminals, coastal land reclamation, industrial zones, and transportation networks can be viewed as elements of a broader coastal strategy. Together, they allow Chinese state-linked enterprises to become embedded in Sri Lanka’s maritime economy. The central concern is therefore not simply whether a particular port will host Chinese military assets, but whether cumulative commercial access, logistical familiarity, infrastructure management, and political influence could enhance Beijing’s strategic options during a future crisis.
Political access forms another important layer of China’s engagement. Beijing has cultivated relationships with successive Sri Lankan governments, political parties, officials, business elites, media organisations, universities, and policy communities. The International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has maintained party-to-party engagement, while Chinese institutions have promoted governance exchanges, policy training, development narratives, and diplomatic positions favourable to Beijing. Such engagement should not automatically be equated with political control. Sri Lankan leaders possess agency and have often used competition among China, India, Japan, the United States, and other partners to secure investment and diplomatic flexibility. Nevertheless, close relationships between external actors and domestic political networks can reduce transparency, politicise infrastructure choices, and make strategic projects difficult to reassess when governments change.
Within the broader Silk Cage Series, organised by the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs under its research project, The Silk Noose: China’s Power Architecture in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region, this webinar will examine how infrastructure, coastal access, political relationships, and influence operations reinforce one another. Following earlier discussions on the Bay of Bengal and China–Indochina corridors, the webinar will consider whether Sri Lanka represents a self-contained development partnership or a central link in an interconnected Chinese maritime architecture extending across the Indian Ocean. By involving a range of experts, this webinar, the sixth in the Silk Cage series, will generally address the following questions among many more:
- Is China’s engagement with Sri Lanka principally development-oriented, or does it constitute a long-term strategy for securing political and maritime leverage in the Indian Ocean?
- Do Hambantota Port, Colombo Port City, and other coastal projects form an integrated Chinese port-and-logistics architecture, or are they commercially distinct investments?
- How does China employ party-to-party relations, elite engagement, media outreach, institutional exchanges, and development narratives to influence Sri Lanka’s political environment?
- To what extent have Sri Lankan political parties and governing elites enabled, resisted, or strategically instrumentalised China’s expanding presence?
- How can Sri Lanka preserve economic benefits and strategic autonomy while balancing China, India, Japan, the United States, and other Indo-Pacific partners?
Speakers:
Tabita Rosendal is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She completed her PhD at Lund University, Sweden, in June 2025, where she examined China’s foreign policy in Sri Lanka through the lens of the actors, practices, and objectives shaping bilateral relations. Her research focused on the implementation of the “Belt and Road” Initiative, particularly in the ports of Hambantota and Colombo, and explored the agency of Chinese and Sri Lankan stakeholders involved in these projects.
Nilanthi Samaranayake is an Adjunct Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington and has spent most of her career researching Indian Ocean and South Asian security. She is author of the forthcoming book, Smaller South Asian Countries: Great-Power Competition, Asymmetry, and Agency (Bloomsbury Academic, 2027). Previously, Samaranayake served as Director of the Strategy and Policy Analysis Program at the Center for Naval Analyses and as a Visiting Expert at the US Institute of Peace. Before joining CNA, she analyzed public opinion for a decade at Pew Research Center and completed a fellowship at the National Bureau of Asian Research.
Dr. Ivan Lidarev is a Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore (NUS), and a Visiting Lecturer at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. He specialises in China-India relations, Asian security, and EU-Asia relations. He obtained his PhD from King’s College London and has substantial think tank experience, having held fellowships at institutions such as Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Institute of International Relations (IIR, Prague), and LSE IDEAS. He also served as an advisor at Bulgaria’s National Assembly (2014-2017), Graduate Teaching Assistant at the Defence Academy of the UK (2018-2019), and Associate Features Editor of E-International Relations (2015-2016).
Dr. Smruti S. Pattanaik is a Research Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), New Delhi, where she coordinates the South Asia Centre. She holds a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of International Studies and specialises in South Asian regional security, foreign policy, and neighbourhood dynamics. With nearly 30 years of research experience, Dr. Pattanaik has held prestigious international fellowships and visiting positions, including ICCR Chair Professor at the University of Colombo, Visiting Fellow at the International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Postdoctoral Fellow at FMSH/CERI (Sciences Po, Paris), and Ford Foundation Asia Fellow at the University of Dhaka. She has lectured extensively across South Asia and internationally, including at the universities of Melbourne, Dhaka, Karachi, Peshawar, and Colombo.
Moderator:
Dr. Jagannath Panda is the Head of the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs (SCSA-IPA) at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), Sweden. Dr. Panda is also a Senior Fellow at The Hague Center for Strategic Studies in the Netherlands. As a senior expert on China, East Asia, and Indo-Pacific affairs, Prof. Panda has testified to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission at the US Congress on ‘China and South Asia’. He is the Series Editor for Routledge Studies on Think Asia.
Previous webinars in the Silk Cage Series are available here.