News Analysis | A perception shift in relations between Sri Lanka and China?

Beijing is coming under increasing public scrutiny in the island nation

From the time the pandemic struck last year, China has topped the charts in providing crucial and timely support to Sri Lanka -- by way of over $ 2 billion in loans and a currency swap, and Sinopharm vaccines totalling over a million in donation, and about six million for procurement so far. However, despite the past and pandemic-time assistance, China is under more public scrutiny in the island nation than ever before. This is significant, because in Sri Lanka’s Sinhala nationalist political landscape, resistance to the “imperialist” West, and “interventionist” India is a popular political position, dominating rhetoric in the country’s Sinhala-majority south, since its Independence in 1948, through its civil war years, and the decade after. But the growing scepticism of China, in public discourse and the media – including cartoons alluding to the dragon or Chinese flag – is relatively new. The sentiment came to the fore in May this year, when the government passed a controversial Bill , and during recent controversies over sign boards in public places and government offices that , a national language in Sri Lanka. Resistance to the Port City Bill, Sri Lanka’s influential Buddhist monks said they would never allow a “Chinese colony” in their country.