Recording available: Silk Cage Series – Webinar VI: Ports, Power, and Political Access: China’s Strategic Grip over Sri Lanka
September 1, 2026: The recording of the Silk Cage Series – Webinar VI: Ports, Power, and Political Access: China’s Strategic Grip over Sri Lanka is now available on ISDP’s YouTube channel.
Within the broader Silk Cage Series, organized 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 considered 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, addressed 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?