Back in 2014, Sri Lankan president gotabaya Rajapaksaand Chinese president Xi Jinping
partnered up to build a brand new city called Colombo Port.
Costing over 1.4 Billion dollars, The project promised to bring along a new region for commercial,
economic, and residential development.
But 7 years after the project was announced, it's still nowhere near completed, with tensions
rising between the 2 nations in charge of this massive project.
What happened here.
In the early 2000s, Dubai spent tens of billions of dollars to create 3 artificial islands
on top of the sea floor.
And now Sri lanka is doing the exact same thing, dredging over 60 million cubic meters
of sand and rock to construct the artificial land mass.
Sri Lanka had hoped for their new, expanded territory to help grow their economy, and
bring along a thriving business hub like other countries around them such as Singapore and
Dubai.
But dredging all this sand and piling it on the ocean floor was not the best public image
for both countries.
Back when Dubai built their artificial islands, Environmental groups were furious about the
damage it did to underwater ecosystems and wildlife.
10 years after Dubai’s environmental disruption, it's being done all over again and environmental
groups are not agreeing with China’s plans.
In 2015, the project was forced to pause for 1 year while an environmental impact assessment
and finally resumed 1 year later.After all the delays.and 5 years of sand The land mass
was finished in 2019, but just as plans moved forward to begin with the construction on
the artificial island.
construction was immediately paused when tensions grew between the two countries in charge of
the project.
Sri Lanka’s citizens discovered that the 1.4 billion dollar project was funded completely
by china.
This sparked a deal of outrage, with some pushing the belief that the new capital city
would be turned into a Chinese colony and infringe on Sri Lanka’s territory and its
citizens rights.
Even with ongoing concerns of China’s involvement with the project, 4 months later ground was
broken on the first building on the brand new artificial island.
But why do all these countries keep dredging new land from the ocean?
With climate change and rising sea levels, why is the best way to expand always by sea?
To answer this question, we first need to look at these countries as a whole.
Dubai expanded with artificial islands to be unique, and promote tourism.
Sri Lanka on the other hand, is not building their artificial island for tourism, but for
better access to the silk road.
The silk road is a group of trade routes that go from Asia to the mediterranean sea.
With China now having partial control of a port south of their own country, they could
continue to dominate the trade in the region.
The silk road is a major part of China’s economy, and they invested nearly 1 trillion
dollars to rebuild the silk road and placed a large bet that it would pay off in the future.
Part of their rebuilding efforts to the trade route, was partnering with Sri Lanka to have
more dominance in the trade route.
China’s aggressive development of trading ports across the Indian Ocean makes many believe
that the nation is trying to dominate trade in the region by a very far margin.
Of the 660 acres of dredged land on the artificial island, Less than half of them, 308 to be
exact, will be given to the Sri lanken government, while china will have control of 125 acres.
In simple terms, sri lanka allowed china to come in and build on their land, pay for it
themselves, and take a large percentage of it for their own personal gain.
Sri lanka sold its precious resources to china in the hope of seeing some economic benefits,
when china is the only country who may end up benefiting from all this in the end.
As of writing this video, phase 1 of the project is set to be completed in 2022, with the rest
scheduled for 2041, a long time away.
With the tensions of both countries continuing as construction begins on top of the artificial
land mass, only time will tell if the two countries can get along for another 20 years
to finish the project.
Whether this project was created with an intent to only benefit China, or to help both countries'
economies thrive, it will be remembered as one of the most ambitious modern day developments
in history.
Dubai started the artificial island venture in 2001, and Sri Lanka and China will continue
it 20 years later.
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