merelygifted:

India is trying to outdo China in its alacrity to provide financial help to Sri Lanka, which is running dangerously low on foreign reserves to service its debt.

India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was in Sri Lanka this week to offer help to the struggling Sri Lankan economy in an attempt to pry it away from a decades-long Chinese embrace.

Sri Lanka’s two-year-old economic crisis comes after two decades of heavy Chinese investment, under what a geopolitical expert called “strategic trap diplomacy.″

Having a giant, increasingly assertive neighbor so closely intertwined with Sri Lanka has unsettled India, which is locked in a standoff with China at their disputed Himalayan border. Sri Lanka’s economic crisis affords India an opportunity to wean the country away from Beijing’s influence.

Perched just off busy East-West shipping lanes, Sri Lanka has drawn billions in investment under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The program was launched in 2013 to build ports, roads, railways, pipelines and other infrastructure across Asia.

But China has taken over at least one strategic port when Sri Lanka failed to service its debt. New Delhi won a small but significant victory Tuesday when it wrested away a power project earlier granted to China.

India is also trying to outdo China in its alacrity to provide financial help to Sri Lanka, which is running dangerously low on foreign reserves to service its debt. According to central bank data obtained by Reuters, Sri Lanka currently has about $2 billion in foreign exchange reserves against $7 billion in total debt due this year, including $1 billion worth of notes maturing in July.  …