WHY CHINA, AND WHY NOW

The Chinese seem to know more than well the potential for Sri Lanka as a country that, Singapore style, could make it in the economic big league by first being a transshipment hub, and then a regional economic engine by virtue of some of the world's most priceless harbour facilities in some of the most coveted global shipping routes. In short that's why the Chinese have placed their bets on this country, and taken to infrastructure facility development in Sri Lanka in a manner that befits the word's emerging economic powerhouse that could help emerging economies piggy-back on its own success, while nurturing a symbiotic relationship structured towards mutual progress.

China 's gauging of Sri Lanka's economic potential however seems to have been remarkably astute in this context. Take the Jaffna-Colombo expressway. This could be the best thing for economy and reconciliation at the same time, though there will be the usual teeth-gnashing protests prompted by this suggestion. But yet, a highway can build relationships.

Build them and they will come - it's the motto by which the Chinese themselves are floating the Chinese economic miracle. Buildings are coming up in mind boggling numbers, and the Chinese are planning the world's tallest building, which is to come up in a matter of weeks, as is pre-fabricated!

'Build it and they will come' is no manthara for cynics and the compulsively partisan and pessimistic. They will say highways do not build 'reconciliation' -- only breast-beating and hear-tearing will. But the cynics will find that results have a way of getting ahead of their incurable crassness about these things.

Parallel to the Jaffna-Colombo highway project will be the Kandy Colombo Kurunegala highway project, and of course as it is already well known, the Southern highway will be extended upto Kataragama.

Sri Lanka badly needs foreign direct investment says the Chinese researcher that was quoted in our lead story this week, who predicts a Singapore style success saga for Sri Lanka. The Chinese however are willing to oblige on that score. As the front page story today states, Chinese bankers are almost falling over each other in a bid to help Sri Lanka raise the funds for investment, research and development. All this seems to have caused apoplexy among the usual cynics, naysayers and the storm-cloud Cassandras. The BBC correspondent in Colombo preceded the President's China visit by airing a Sri Lanka-China segment which ended by stating that many in Sri Lanka are cynical that the regime is becoming indebted to the Chinese!

Holes can be picked in anything including a perfect new highway surface, but finding fault with Chinese investment and support is incredibly retrograde but then again, being incredibly retrogressive is the trademark behaviour of the Sri Lanka club of civil society cynics.

Sri Lanka being economically tied to China and politically tied to China are two different things, but there is nothing necessarily wrong in geopolitically determined ties either. The Chinese have helped Sri Lanka in all of the recent crises that have faced the country, and there isn't a need to detail the issues here.

When a primacy has been placed on diplomacy as if diplomacy alone is the way forward in today's world, friendship with China seems to work to a design -- paradigm if you will -- of its own. There are few rules when there is a partnership with the world's emerging power. The relationship defines itself.

The political opposition is ruing all this, and the BBC's negative reactions etc., are all reflective of that negativity. But, the new dynamic in China-Lanka relations is based on the practicalities of nation building and not the abstract theories of good governance.

That's what's good about it. For one thing, these are not things that Sri Lankan civil society actors in the main can relate to. They are left at sea. That's always better - in any case they are being fast overtaken most of the time, and there is not much use of people who are perennially finding themselves at the bottom of the pile.