CIA chief blames Sri Lanka for betting on China
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An aerial view of the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport
Amidst an unprecedented economic crisis, and being caught in a huge debt-trap, Sri Lanka has been blamed for the 'dumb bets' it made on China.
Bill Burns, chief of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), on Wednesday blamed the gamble Sri Lanka made with China as a factor in Sri Lanka's economioc collapse for its current economic crisis, news agency AFP has reported. He added that it should serve as a warning to other nations.
In its development thrust, and under the tempting finance packages offered by China, Sri Lanka has borrowed heavily from the cash-rich China for infrastructure projects, but some of them ended up as white elephants.
"The Chinese have a lot of weight to throw around and they can make a very appealing case for their investments," Burns said at the Aspen Security Forum.
But nations should look at "a place like Sri Lanka today -- heavily indebted to China -- which has made some really dumb bets about their economic future and is suffering pretty catastrophic, both economic and political, consequences as a result.
"That, I think, ought to be an object lesson to a lot of other players -- not just in the Middle East or South Asia, but around the world -- about having your eyes wide open about those kinds of dealings", AFP quoted him as saying.
China has invested heavily in Sri Lanka -- strategically located in the Indian Ocean and off India, both factors that weighed heavily on Chinese political and strategic decision making, and worked closely with former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned last week in the face of mass protests over dire economic conditions, with the island nearly exhausting its supply of food and fuel.
In 2017, Sri Lanka was unable to repay a $1.4 billion loan for a port construction in the south of the country and was forced to lease out the facility to a Chinese company for 99 years - a case of big powers tightening grip on smaller, but geopolitically strategic countries.
The Chinese-aided projects included an airport near the port , the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, built with a $200 million loan from China, that was so scarcely used that at one point it was unable to cover its electricity bill.
