According to Global Network news, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin answered a question about Sri Lanka hoping that China would provide assistance at a regular press conference on the 15th.
Recently, Sri Lanka has encountered a serious economic and social crisis. The entire country has actually gone bankrupt. People cannot buy fuel and lack food. Even schools have announced that classes will be suspended indefinitely because they cannot afford ink and paper.
After the crisis broke out in Sri Lanka, China has urgently provided 500 million yuan in aid funds and a large amount of food to Sri Lanka to provide the most basic food security for its domestic students.
However, so far the Chinese government has not given a clear reply to Sri Lanka’s request for help.
In fact, there is close cooperation between China and Sri Lanka. China is also Sri Lanka's main creditor and has lent Sri Lanka a large amount of funds.
The Sri Lankan government has not been able to effectively govern the country for many years. Especially after former President Rajapaksa came to power, he introduced a series of ridiculous measures. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic in recent years, this tourism-based country has The country is in crisis.
At the beginning of this year, Sri Lanka asked China for a loan of US$5 billion, but China did not respond directly.
The reason is also very simple. At that time, Sri Lanka's loan arrears to China had reached as high as 5.6 billion US dollars, and judging from the country's political and economic situation, they did not have the ability to repay.
China did not express its position directly, but in fact it was equivalent to telling Sri Lanka that it would not lend them any more money.
Currently, the Sri Lankan government has declared national bankruptcy and has also stated that it will suspend the repayment of all foreign debts because they really have no money to repay.
Wang Wenbin said that the Chinese government has been paying close attention to the economic difficulties encountered by its neighbors and hopes to provide help for Sri Lanka's economic recovery.
However, this does not mean that we will continue to lend money to them. At least this government has been extremely disappointing. If we continue to lend money to them, we can only tear down the east wall to pay for the west wall, which is a drop in the bucket. This government is extremely corrupt. It doesn't know how to govern the country, and it doesn't care about the lives of the people.
Former Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa originally had American citizenship. He returned to his motherland in order to run for president. After being elected as president, under his leadership, Sri Lanka's economy has been in decline and corruption within the government has become increasingly serious, but the president has remained indifferent.
In fact, if you look at the internal structure of this government, you will understand that this is an empty shell controlled by the Rajapaksa family.
After Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected president, he appointed his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa as Prime Minister of the government, and appointed his younger brother Bashir Rajapaksa as Finance Minister.
After these three brothers came to power, in addition to collecting money, they also did some things to accelerate the collapse of the country.
Due to the epidemic, Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves have been depleted rapidly, and fertilizers are their main imported goods. In order to save foreign exchange, the president actually proposed a plan to transform Sri Lanka into an organic farming country in advance.
To put it simply, chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not used when farming, but green manure is used, but the result is that the grain yield is less than half of the original.
Seeing that the country was about to fall into a serious famine, the government had to urgently use more foreign exchange to import grain and distribute it to farmers. Not only did this not save the few dollars, but it also gave farmers a bad habit of laziness. They simply stopped farming and waited at home for government relief. The hidden dangers of the crisis were piling up.
After the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, the Sri Lankan government suddenly detained a Russian passenger plane on the grounds that a British court imposed sanctions on Russian airline .
This rapidly deteriorated the relationship between Sri Lanka and Russia and accelerated the outbreak of the national crisis.
At present, the Rajapaksa brothers have fled to the United States with a large amount of money. Some people suspect that this family was sent by the Americans to destroy Sri Lanka.
Before the Sri Lankan government is unable to clean up the situation, it is estimated that it will be difficult for China to lend a helping hand to them again. At least loans and investments will definitely have to wait for a long time.
Sri Lanka seems to have been completely disappointed with the West and has pinned all its hopes on China's assistance.
