New Chinese ambassador arrives in Colombo pledging deeper ties

Chinas newly appointed ambassador to Sri Lanka, Wei Huaxiang, has arrived in Colombo pledging to strengthen the long-standing friendship between the two countries and expand cooperation, as he begins his mission on an island where Beijing has become both one of the largest creditors and the most dependable diplomatic ally.

Wei arrived on 11 August and was received at the airport by representatives of Sri Lankas Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chinese enterprises operating on the island, overseas Chinese communities, Sri Lanka-China friendship organisations, Chinese media and the Chinese embassy. In a written statement issued on arrival, he said it was a great honour to have been appointed by the Chinese president Xi Jinping as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.

He invoked a long history of exchange, from the ancient Silk Road and the Rubber-Rice Pact to Master Faxians voyage in search of Buddhist scriptures, Admiral Zheng Hes fleet, the Prince of Ceylon who settled in Quanzhou, and Sri Lankas gift of three baby elephants to Chinese children. More recent cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative had brought tangible benefits to both peoples, he said, pointing to the China-Sri Lanka Joint Research and Demonstration Centre for Water Technology and the supply of fabric for school uniforms benefiting millions of students across the island.

The ambassador cited meetings in 2025 between Xi and the Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, saying they had provided new strategic guidance for bilateral relations. China, he said, always takes Sri Lanka as a priority in its neighbourhood diplomacy, describing the two as "good brothers and good friends that share weal and woe", and said Beijing was ready to strengthen the synergy of development strategies and deepen the strategic cooperative partnership.

Wei noted that 2027 will mark the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations and the 75th anniversary of the Rubber-Rice Pact, and pledged to carry forward the traditional friendship, expand mutually beneficial cooperation and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese institutions and citizens.

See the full text of his remarks here.

Wei succeeds Qi Zhenhong, who left the island after nearly six years marked by unusually combative diplomacy, including a public attack on India over its objections to a Chinese military survey vessel docking at Hambantota, and a sustained charm offensive across the Tamil homeland. When asked directly in Jaffna about Chinas role in the Tamil genocide, Qi declined to answer, instead praising Tamils for having made "the right choice" in backing the National Peoples Power.

Beijing has long been Colombos most dependable ally. It provided diplomatic, financial and military backing to the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa during the final phase of the armed conflict in 2009, in which tens of thousands of Tamils were killed, and has since repeatedly shielded Sri Lanka from accountability resolutions at the UN Human Rights Council, voting most recently to extend the mandate of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights while continuing to oppose international scrutiny of the island.

Chinese lending was also central to the debt burden that pushed Sri Lanka into sovereign default in 2022. The 99-year lease of Hambantota Port to a Chinese company in 2017, after Colombo struggled to service the loans behind it, has been widely cited as an illustration of the strategic costs of that financing, while the Colombo Port City remains the flagship of Beijings footprint on the island.

Wei arrives days after Indias foreign secretary Vikram Misri visited Colombo, in a continuing contest for influence in which successive Sri Lankan governments have sought to balance New Delhi, Beijing and the West.