Sri Lanka has been completely overwhelmed for the past two days, and due to the serious debt problem, economic problems, and even food problems, there is no hope of a solution. The prime minister declared the "country bankrupt," and then thousands of people rushed to the presidential palace and the president's residence to find that the president was gone. Basically, the famous Jiangnan Tannery on the jianghu closed down the routine.
In sri Lanka, the West is really happy. In fact, as early as the government declared the bankruptcy of the country, pro-China scholars in the Swedish Belt and Road Implementation Group have already spoken out, accusing some Western mainstream media, think tanks, some government officials to blame Sri Lanka's unfortunate situation on China's debts, their Cooperation project between China and Sri Lanka in hambantota port as a reason, scare other countries to say, who borrowed China's money, if it is not enough, will become Sri Lanka, the most typical speculator here, called Kishida Fumio, not the same name, It was the one who became prime minister in Japan.
According to the statistics in 2021, in Sri Lanka's foreign debt, China's share is only 10%, the international capital market, mainly the Western capital market those financial companies, the United States BlackRock Company and the United Kingdom Ashmolean Company, their share accounted for 47%, Kishida Fumio blamed China, in fact, Japan itself accounted for 10%. Therefore, the pro-China scholars in Sweden cannot look down.
In 2017, the money owed to Western companies was due and there was no money to pay off the debt, and the Sri Lankan government said it would lease the hambantota port to China. Then the Sri Lankan government will be able to pay off the debt with the funds it receives, and if it were not for the project to lease the port, the Sri Lankan government would have gone bankrupt long ago.
So why Sri Lanka is so poor, there are its own reasons, there are also reasons for being fooled. Its own reasons are actually very easy to understand, there is no modern industry in this country, there is agriculture, there is tourism, it is said that it is possible to eat by the sky.
And Sri Lanka has suffered several blows in recent years, with the global outbreak wiping out Sri Lanka's tourism industry by 85%. More than $3 billion less in revenue a year. In addition, Sri Lanka originally had rich wind energy and solar energy resources, but did not use it, and felt that solar and wind energy was expensive and not easy to use, so it could only import coal, oil and natural gas in large quantities. In the past two years, the price of energy has risen, and the Russo-Ukrainian War has become worse and worse, and it has been lost.
The first two are indeed beyond the control of the Sri Lankan government itself, and that is it. In 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa came to power as president and began to carry out reforms, requiring all 2 million farmers in the country to achieve green organic cultivation, prohibiting the import and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to increase the added value of agricultural products, believing that this can prevent foreign exchange from flowing out.
Some countries in Europe, such as Switzerland, Germany, people engage in some organic agriculture, it is really because the population is not large, some are food access channels, eating is not a problem, get a little bit of organic agriculture, that is at the expense of production, you know not only do not let the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, organic agriculture has requirements for the soil. Sri Lanka played this is not clear who it is, what to do, all of a sudden let its own 1/3 of the arable land was scrapped, and then the production was finished, the price of rice rose by 50%, the tea production decreased, and the loss of hundreds of millions. Then now grain also has to rely heavily on imports, and whether the people have enough to eat is a problem. So we can also think about our domestic situation, per capita arable land is not much, but also every year to import a large number of agricultural products to meet the demand, which is the so-called backbone, every day shouting can only eat pure natural organic food, and then to their own fan base to sell sky-high chicken? There is nothing wrong with playing this kind of emotional agriculture at home, and to promote this in the entire industry, it is really difficult to say what the motivation is.
Therefore, the problems encountered by Sri Lanka are not caused by China's debt, but precisely if Sri Lanka can integrate its economy into China's economic circle earlier and take advantage of the stability of China's overall economy, it will have better anti-risk ability.
There are many countries like Sri Lanka, for which they are united around China and believe in the so-called debt trap intimidation of the West, they all have the right to choose their own path, but I am afraid that there is only one chance to choose.