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Party’s over
Faced with an overseas debt crisis, will China change its ways?
It looks like it may have no choice.
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Currently, the future of Sri Lanka (above) hangs in the balance.
PHOTO: RUSSELL BLINCH
The Economist
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Few moments better encapsulate the hope and hubris of China's Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure binge, than the inauguration of Sri Lanka's Colombo Port City in 2014. China's President Xi Jinping attended in person, nodding approvingly as a project manager introduced the US$15 billion (S$20.92 billion) plan to build a high-tech offshore financial centre with a marina, hotels and luxury homes on 269 hectares of land reclaimed from the sea off Sri Lanka's capital. Local officials likened the project to Dubai and Singapore.
Mr Xi called it a "major hub" of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road - the part of Belt and Road that aimed to reshape ocean trade by financing ports and related infrastructure without the pesky conditions that Western and multilateral lenders demand.
