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Jinping’s light relief adds zing to Sino fling
View(s):Boss of Bosses, China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Lanka on Tuesday showed what it means to have the leader of a regional superpower on home ground.
Hardly had he graced the Lankan air, President Jinping revealed China’s King Kong heart by swaying the Lankan President to open the Chinese fortune cookie he had brought with him and to read the message therein to the delight of a people hard-pressed to make ends meet.
“The Government has decided to reduce the price of fuel, and the electricity tariff from midnight yesterday in appreciation of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit and China’s contribution to reduce the cost of electricity and energy,” President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared at the commissioning of the final phase of the Norochcholai Coal Power Plant on Tuesday in the presence of the Chinese President.
“This will benefit all households in Sri Lanka,” the President added, “Your country’s assistance in this regard, Excellency, has enabled me to realise a pledge to my people, for which I am thankful.”
Not all the kilowatts to be generated at the Chinese funded electricity plant could power the light that shone on Lankan faces at the news that electricity bills would be reduced by 25 per cent effective midnight. Not all the many high flown, Chinese funded mega projects from which no tangible benefit has still flowed could evoke the smile, relief and goodwill toward the Chinese leader when the good news was brought home to a people struggling to keep the wolf from the door.
Unlike last fortnight’s visit of the Japanese Prime Minister who sounded more like a Toyota car salesmen at a Detroit automobile convention when he referred to the old Sinhala saying ‘japana hapana’ and urged Lankans to buy more Japanese vehicles and goods, the Chinese president cut a dapper yet taciturn figure and epitomised the poker-faced statesmanship of the mysterious Orient.
This was the first visit by a Chinese leader since late President Li Xiannian’s state visit to Sri Lanka in 1986, and how different he would have found it. Twenty eight years ago, under the UNP government of J. R. Jayewardene Lanka was firmly entrenched in the American camp and looked west morn, noon, eve and night to say her prayers for aid.
Today Washington is no longer Lanka’s shrine of hope, and Uncle Sam has almost been relegated to the status of persona non grata. For Lanka, after more than two hundred years of looking west, the sun rises now from the east. China’s hegemony over Lanka is complete; she has taken the island, land, air and sea. Nothing moves, nothing grows, nothing rhymes and nothing, it seems, will survive for long without Beijing’s blessings. From human rights and foreign affairs to financial and economic matters, the Chinese currency renminbi talks loudest. China has become the last bamboo to clutch for a nation bereft of international friends and influence; especially with India taking a backseat and keeping a watchful hostile hawk eye at an arms distance.
Rajapaksa says Xi has enabled him to fulfil a pledge to his people
Across the Palk Strait while Tamil Nadu’s Jayalalithaa howls over her fishermen and Delhi’s Modi growls over the non-implementation of the 13th Amendment, the Chinaman from the Far East purrs with soothing words of support at international forums and pours the honey dew of assurances to calm Lanka’s troubled mind that violation of her sovereignty by any foreign power will not be allowed. Not to mention of course that China’s cornucopia is ever there to fill the fast depleting coffers and finance every mega project at special terms of interest.
While the world threatens Lanka with sanctions and demands she mend her ways on human rights or else no international lending institution will accept the Sri Lankan guarantee as security for loans, communist China is more accommodating; and willingly lends billions, asking only for a freehold as collateral. A mortgage over Lanka’s future seed and blossom ‘will do nicely’ for her.
How China was able, especially in the last ten years, to come from the far east and strategically occupy the indispensable position she holds today; how she was able to drive a wedge between Lanka and India in so discreet a fashion and dislodge India’s historical dominion over Lanka and usurp her special traditional relationship as elder brother, how the Chinese moved from extracting teeth and providing dentures to the locals to become Lanka’s second biggest trading partner, supplying toys to mega coal power plants are the stuff that has made the miracle of Lanka a Made-in-China product.
However, these rapid changes may even shock the Chinese themselves who may regard it as painstakingly fast. With over five thousand years of history behind it, China’s progress has always been marked, like its giant panda’s gait, with slow but steady measured movements, never settling for expediency but always moving forward, toward the long term goal it has set its mind upon and once it has set, no force can budge it. The secular philosophy of Confucius and the sublime doctrine of the Buddha have impressed a stoic outlook on life and revealed the reality of time as the relative fourth dimension. When modern China’s founding father Mao Zedong was asked how the effects of the 1789 French Revolution have influenced world events, his answer was “it’s too early to tell.”
Today Lanka has the opportunity to become the star of South Asia only by being another moon of China. But if not for that genuflection, if not for that willingness to orbit her vast sphere would Lanka end up as a burnt out star, condemned to be the black hole of Asia? Would dependence on the western powers have led to the massive development that has taken place? Suffice to say that it took over 64 years after independence from the British for Lanka to have, thanks to China’s largesse, a four lane twenty kilometre highway, which when opened was regarded as a modern day marvel and hailed as a cause for national jubilance.
It must be admitted that China has done wonders for Lanka and has still not claimed as the west would do with blood, her pound of flesh. She has given us a new airport, a new sea port and other mega projects for future generations to enjoy and expressways and a modernised road network for the present road users to travel on. And now she has given the Norochcholai Coal Power Plant, and, with her president’s personal attendance at its commissioning ceremony, ensured that its benefits immediately flowed to the masses that night itself.
The great wall of cynicism and distrust that historically coloured Sino-Lanka relations has temporarily been demolished, replaced by a new shining facade of goodwill and good cheer at the good news of benefits flowing from Chinese intervention. In the midst of such euphoria, only the most diehard Sinhalese will make a petty fuss that the official joint statement issued by the two governments at the end of Jinping’s visit, is written in only Chinese and English with Lanka’s official language Sinhala being totally excluded. Only the most suspicious conspiracy theorist would point out that on the pretext of searching for 15th century Chinese shipwrecks in Lankan waters, the Chinese have managed to gain permission to explore the entire coastline of the island and amass a wealth of information on the continental shelf of the island.
But who can afford to be pedantic at this hour when China has become not only Lanka’s fairy godfather handing out expensive gifts but, more importantly, also guardian of Lanka’s sovereignty. Her position as an elected member of the UN’s Human Rights Commission and her permanent seat on the apex UN Security Council give her enormous power to ensure Lanka’s fragile sovereignty remains immaculate and inviolate. Without her protection, Lanka would be up for grabs, and would be mauled and gangbanged beyond recognition by the predacious pack lurking in western shadows.
Thus in this Chinese Year of the Wood Horse — to the unsuspecting Greeks it was the wooden Trojan horse — China’s gift of power and light at a discounted price, must induce the Sinhala lion to lie down with the Chinese dragon and await the day in Shangri-La when the chink of coins will toll a lullaby to soothe Lanka to sleep the sleep of the innocent.
| Keeping the Great in Britain
SUNDAY PUNCH 3 Great Britain would, no doubt, be heaving a united sigh of relief this Sunday morning to know that she had not been rendered any lesser thanks to Scotland’s referendum decision on Thursday to remain in a kingdom that is far from united. Eighty-five per cent of Scotland’s 4 million voters cast their votes at a referendum held to decide whether Scotland should separate from the United Kingdom which comprises England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. And though 55 per cent of Scots voted ‘no’ to the breakaway, 45 per cent gave the official thumbs up to a split. Had the ‘yes’ Scots won the extra six per cent, it would have meant the end of a three hundred year union, formed after the Union with Scotland Act and Union with England Act were passed in 1706 and 1709 by the English and Scottish parliaments respectively. Until then the kingdoms of Scotland and England were individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciary and laws. After the enactments a single united kingdom named Great Britain came into being, under a single monarch. For England, the Scottish verdict will be the end of a nightmare. For an imperialist nation that had shown no qualms of dividing India into two on the eve of her departure and carved out a Northern Ireland from Ireland to rule over as her own, the prospect of having an independent state of Scotland on British soil has been too much to bear. Not only would it have enabled Scotland to revive her monarchy if she so wished, and have a new 21st century Mary, Queen of Scots to rival Queen Elizabeth of England but it would have also allowed Scotland to form her own alliances with other nations even against the interests of England. Perhaps now, those on this sceptred isle, this other Eden, may sympathise better with similar island nations who oppose at any cost, even with blood, the dismemberment of the island mass. Today the English can sleep assured that the territorial integrity of the British Isles is safe and intact. But before they get too upbeat about the referendum’ result, they should bear in mind that they only escaped doomsday narrowly. Next time, who knows, things may turn out different. And the unthinkable may happen. Divine retribution to what England did to other nations has been put on hold. Nemesis may yet land on the White Cliffs of Dover in the near future to avenge the crime of hubris and punish a seafaring, plundering race of English conquistadors who displayed without fear Victorian arrogance before the Gods at the zenith of their colonial power. Let voters make hay in poll’s sunshine No sin in doing ‘pin’to win SUNDAY PUNCH 2 What presumptuous arrogance recklessly urged election monitors and political observers to denounce the innocent practice of distributing alms to the needy in the Uva Province by politicians seeking a new political rebirth blessed with the same prosperity they have so far enjoyed? What difference is there between them and those richly endowed who erect golden fences around Bodhi trees in the belief that such munificence will guarantee a future birth flushed with a Fort Knox of gold stashed in their private purses? These politicians may have helped the ‘have-nots’ with the ulterior hope of persuading the Uva peasant to give them his valued vote in the self same manner that those with ill gotten gains publicly bribe the gods and flatter the fates to secure a better life in the hereafter. But whether the desired end result will materialize as ardently prayed for, remains torturously uncertain. Whether voters can be bought, whether the fates can be swayed to deliver what is demanded is an X factor, If inscrutable are the ways of providence, unfathomable is the voter’s mind. What haughty superiority complexes drive privileged monitors and critics to be disdainful of rain clouds debarring the voters’ temporary spell of promising sunshine during which brief period they find themselves elevated from beggars to kings? Life had never been this good for the good people of Uva since nominations closed and the campaign to win the Uva voters’ hand began in earnest. For a people who had been long forgotten and relegated to the backwaters of rural Lanka, it was Christmas and it had come early. Apart from carpeted roads upon which these political Santas rode their limousines laden with hampers to the hamlets of the humble, there were many other gifts hanging on the Christmas tree. Part of the baubles that glistened, as claimed by many sour pusses critical of the Uva voters heaven sent bonanza, were liberal amounts of cash doled out — never mind whose coffers it came from, what matters is the people got it for a change — there were food baskets generously handed over, sil shawls for old women to wear when observing religious ceremonies, rice packets for those observing sil on Binara Poya day; and, to ensure the bread winner was not left out of the polls’ bounty, free arrack and free women. Alas, all good things must come to an end and it ended yesterday when the electorate was called up to deliver the quid pro quo and finally cast their vote. But for whom did they vote? Aye, there’s the rub for in that moment of casting the vote had the voter tossed aside airy fairy promises he supposedly made to his benefactor and instead marked his cross in secret for the rival candidate of his choice, must make politicians pause. These customs and practices can never be completely banned. Nor should they be. On the contrary, politicians should be encouraged to spread the sunshine even more. Why deny the village voter the once in five year chance of getting his own back when he can receive all the namaskaram as king maker and all the rich offerings seeking his benediction; and hoist the engineer with his own petard and liberally make election promises he never intends to keep? And, finally, if you have tears to shed, shed them for the poor, gullible, naïve politicos of Lanka. Until there is a sure fire way of knowing which way a man gifted with an abundance of freebies exactly voted, the politicians must forever be fraught with the nagging doubt whether in their mad rush to ascend the poll peak by climbing up the easy steps of bought votes, they have instead only succeeded in throwing their money down Uva’s Dunhinda Falls. |