Hambantota Port is a white elephant in gilded chains

It is pointless for India to try and outbid and buyout every maritime facility that China builds and manages in the Indian Ocean. What India is trying to do is to showcase how the Chinese way of infrastructure building is little more than a modern neo-colonial enterprise

The Sri Lankan part of Hambantota has formally become a Chinese leasehold and will remain so into the twenty-second century. That the port would be handed over to a Chinese firm has been public knowledge for several months. As was the fact that Sri Lanka will also hand over 15,000 acres of land for a Chinese economic zone. All of this in return for China writing off a little over one billion dollars worth of Sri Lanka’s enormous bilateral debt to that country.

Visitors at the deep water shipping port watch Chinese dredging ships work in Hambantota (File Photo) (Reuters)

India has become increasingly used to seeing any Chinese territorial gain in the subcontinent as a zero-sum game.

Hambantota has a different role in the constant shadow boxing between India and China. It is pointless for India to try and outbid and buy out every maritime facility that China builds and manages in the Indian Ocean. Beijing commands far greater economic and financial resources. It makes even less sense to fight over projects like Hambantota which has shown little commercial prospect. What India is trying to do is to showcase how the Chinese way of infrastructure building — high-interest debt, overpricing and demands on the host country’s foreign policy — is little more than a modern neo-colonial enterprise. These are white elephants with gilded chains attached.