Senior officials from Sri Lanka, Nepal start China visits; closer relationships expected

Senior officials from Sri Lanka and Nepal began their official visits to China on Monday, with Chinese analysts expecting their trips to further enhance the two countries’ ties with China and to promote cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to cope with the various challenges in their economic development.

Analysts stressed that friendship and exchanges between China and Sri Lanka and Nepal are long-standing and are not targeted at any third party. They said that regarding other countries as being within one’s own sphere of influence only exposes one’s hegemonic mentality and goes against the trend of the time.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena arrived in Beijing on Monday for a six-day official visit to China at the invitation of Chinese Premier Li Qiang. Gunawardena was received by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister and former ambassador to India Sun Weidong upon his arrival, according to the CGTN on Monday.

Nepal’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Narayan Kaji Shrestha was also scheduled to land in Beijing on Monday. His official visit to China is scheduled from March 25 to April 1.

Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times that both Nepal and Sri Lanka, as important countries in South Asia, have maintained close cooperative relations with China for a long time, and the exchanges and friendship between China and these two countries have basically not been affected by the changes in their domestic politics.

Both Nepal and Sri Lanka are currently facing a lack of momentum in their economies, and both regard China’s development as an important opportunity for their own development, and both seek to further synergize their strategies with BRI, so as to inject more impetus into a sustainable and healthy economic development, Qian said.