| Summary/Abstract |
President Sirisena’s major task will be to re-calibrate Sri Lanka’s relations with India in the wake of a decade long period of China-friendly policies pursued by his predecessor, President Rajapaksa. While India’s strategic interests in Sri Lanka are vital, it also has old cultural and religious ties with the Sri Lankan society going back centuries. A relatively new entrant to the island, China has made large, strategic and commercial investments in Sri Lanka over the last decade, thanks to the Rajapaksas who tried to play China against India. That Sirisena, backed by former President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe, is not exactly well-disposed towards Beijing, is well known However, China cannot easily be shrugged off. Consider this: between 2005 and 2012, China provided US$ 4.761 billion as assistance to Sri Lanka. Of this, only two per cent is an outright grant while the remaining 98 per cent is in the form of soft loans. By contrast, a third of India’s US$ 1.6 billion dollars assistance programme to the island comprises of outright grants.
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