Unveiling Sri Lanka's agency: empowering infrastructural transformation in China-Sri Lanka relations

Sri Lanka's relations with China have been under wide discussion since Beijing's rapid engagement with the island nation in early 2000s. Recent studies of this bilateral relationship often explore the evolution of ties with surrounding economic and trade relations and provide economic and strategic explanations. This paper views China-Sri Lanka bilateral relations through the thematic lens of infrastructure finance in four cases of infrastructure investment: ports, energy, transport, and water and sanitation. It explores Sri Lanka's agency vis-a-vis China, and the extent and forms of this factor in planning, negotiating and implementing infrastructure, and suggests that the agency exerted is interrelated and dependent upon specific economic, political, bureaucratic and international contexts.