US, India play major role in slander campaign against China-Sri Lanka cooperation, alleges Chinese state media

New Delhi: The US and India play a major role in the slander campaign against China-Sri Lanka cooperation and China-funded projects in the country, as per observers, Chinese state media has alleged.

“The US frequently defames China-invested projects in Sri Lanka, partly to hope that Sri Lanka will abandon (the BRI) and opt for the (aid plans) the US offers,” said Qian Feng, Director of the Research Department of the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University., Global Times reported.

“After Sri Lanka declared an economic emergency and asked China for help at the beginning of the year, some Western and Indian conspiracists once again went on a bashing spree against China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),” Global Times reported.

“By maliciously tying Sri Lanka’s recent financial distress to the Chinese investment in the country, they got busy hyping the so-called ‘Chinese debt trap’ in an attempt to mislead the public and attack the China-Sri Lanka cooperation,” the report said.

“With either rumours about currency sovereignty or the so-called ‘China debt trap’, some Western countries, led by the US, and India have been attacking China’s overseas construction projects. However, their cliches have rarely been echoed in BRI countries, Chinese and Sri Lankan scholars said,” the report said.

China is a good friend “with consistent economic policies, good trade practices and a win-win attitude,” Samitha Hettige, advisor of the National Education Commission of Sri Lanka, mentioned in his article published in December on Sri Lanka’s English-language newspaper, Ceylon Today. “Sri Lanka-China relations are quite strong, only based on friendship and nothing to do with (business or politics),” Hettige told the Global Times.

“The ‘China debt trap’, an old accusation though, is another defamation campaign by the West and India against China-Sri Lanka’s economic cooperation,” it said.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded by saying that the accusations are not true. “China-Sri Lanka cooperation is mutually beneficial and has been warmly welcomed by all sectors in Sri Lanka,” said the ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on January 10.

–IANS