Faxian and China’s Efforts to Court Sri Lanka
Marcus Andreopoulos is a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Foundation and a Subject Matter Expert with the Global Threats Advisory Group at NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme
Having elected a new president and government at the end of last year, Sri Lanka looks set to chart a new course in its approach to foreign policy. Since Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s victory in September, both China and India, the two regional – and international – powers with the most interest in Sri Lanka, have paid close attention to the island, hoping to decipher this new direction. Despite his Marxist ideological background, and his party’s historical affinity with Beijing over New Delhi, it is India that has seemingly gained the upper hand in this early stage. Similarly, whilst Xi Jinping was quick to congratulate Dissanayake on his victory, it was the Indian Foreign Minister, S. Jaishankar, who became the first foreign dignitary to visit Sri Lanka at the start of October. Yet should ordinary diplomatic means of building close ties and exerting influence fail, Beijing has a more unconventional strategy in its arsenal to help court Sri Lanka – one dating back to the fifth century AD.
Born in 337 AD, in the northern province of Shanxi, Faxian was a Buddhist monk and traveller who lived during the tumultuous Sixteen Kingdoms period of Chinese history. His achievements in translating several key Buddhist texts from their original Sanskrit into Chinese created enough of a legacy for Faxian’s name to endure through to the modern day. However, it was his travels to India, and more importantly, on to Sri Lanka, which have given Faxian an added political relevance in the thinking of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) today. The CCP has long engaged in historical revisionism to justify its position at the apex of the People’s Republic of China (PRC); the story of Faxian’s travels fit into the international arm of this strategy.
On the eve of the fifth century, Faxian began his voyage south into India, with the intention of collecting Buddhist scriptures to bring back to Shanxi. Records of the pilgrimage can be found in his great work ‘Foguoji’ or ‘Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms,’ which was translated into English by Scottish missionary and translator, James Legge in 1886. Faxian followed a route which took him along the Silk Road into present day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, before setting sail on a merchant ship from the ancient port city of Tamralipta, in the east of India, to Sri Lanka. It was during his time in India that Faxian is understood to have learnt Sanskrit. Arriving in Sri Lanka at the end of the first decade of the fifth century, Faxian was the first recorded Chinese traveller to ever visit the island, and thus, for the CCP, marks a convenient starting point for Sino-Sri Lankan relations.
Faxian’s journey to the South Asian island is now used as a means of presenting China and Sri Lanka as long-standing and natural allies. In an era of strategic competition with the West and amid a regional rivalry with New Delhi, this strategy is intended to give Beijing a slight, but much needed, advantage in bringing Colombo into its sphere of influence. In 2014, during a state visit by Xi Jinping to Sri Lanka, the Chinese leader referenced the ‘1,000 year old bond of Buddhism created by an eminent Chinese monk Faxian,’ which connects the two nations. Faxian continues to act as a focal point for China’s Buddhist diplomacy in Sri Lanka, with his name attached to a charitable organisation that maintains the presence of Chinese soft power on the island.
Faxian’s memory is not just important for Chinese geopolitical ambitions but has genuine historical importance to Buddhists on the island. Whilst in ‘the land of the Sinhalas,’ as Sri Lanka is referred to in his writing, Faxian visited and stayed in places that have since become historical sites remembered with his name. These include a cave and the Abhayagiri Temple, which remains a sacred point of pilgrimage for Buddhists and a point from which Chinese influence can be projected through the Faxian Charity Project. Faxian’s account of his time in Sri Lanka also offers valuable insight into the religious practices of the time, most notably the worshipping of the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha, which involved an ‘elaborate ceremony’ hosted by the local ruler.
Following his return to China, and his subsequent translation of the eleven Buddhist manuscripts he collected on his travels, Faxian helped to further catalyse the spread and development of Buddhism in China. Outside of Sri Lanka, Faxian’s travels have also provided Xi with more historical legitimacy for the BRI’s Silk Road comparison, as well as for the Maritime Silk Road project. Faxian’s expedition through South Asia has also been used to demonstrate China’s historically grounded good intentions, with the peaceful and respectful nature of Faxian’s travels a symbol of Chinese interests through to the modern day. Although as Sri Lankan based commentator Tisaranee Gunasekara has pointed out, this comparison is flawed considering that Faxian was an independent traveller to Sri Lanka and not an emissary from the Later Zhao dynasty that ruled over Shanxi at the time.
In the present day, Faxian continues to be a reference point for the CCP in its dealings with Sri Lanka, and his memory is drawn upon frequently as a tool for soft power and for exporting cultural influence. In 2010, to commemorate the 1600th anniversary of Faxian’s arrival in Sri Lanka, the Chinese embassy organised a special religious and academic event. Although seemingly innocuous on the surface, such events are organised with the hope of further entrenching China’s presence in Sri Lanka. The end goal of this strategy for Beijing is to leverage the historic, religious, and academic ties shared between the two counties to obtain greater access to Colombo and more favourable opportunities for engagement than are afforded other regional or international players.
To this end, Faxian plays a central role in exporting Chinese influence to Sri Lanka. References to the monk and his travels are in abundance from Chinese sources and are used to justify and defend China’s position on the island, particularly with reference to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In fact, Faxian’s memory serves as the platform for the CCP’s Sri Lanka-specific arm of its regional Buddhist-to-Buddhist diplomacy strategy, which has been utilised throughout the Buddhist world in Asia. In the case of Sri Lanka, Chinese soft power is channelled through the Faxian Charity Project, which regularly partakes in charitable acts, such as providing thousands of ration boxes worth millions of Sri Lankan Rupees to communities in need. In many of these cases, the Chinese ambassador is front and centre of any photo opportunity, reminding the locals and the government of the goodwill of the CCP.
This strategy of reputation laundering is more essential than ever for China, considering allegations that it has economically crippled Sri Lanka in recent years, in what has been described by some as ‘debt trap diplomacy.’ China has, after all, had a long history of cooperation with the dominant Rajapaksa dynasty, which has ruled Sri Lanka in one form or another for much of the past two decades. Having supported Mahinda Rajapaksa with vanity infrastructure projects in the 2000s and continuing to pour money into the country in the form of BRI loans after 2013, Chinese loans became synonymous with Mahinda’s presidency. This became damaging for China’s reputation in the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic crisis – this time during Mahinda’s stint as prime minister with his brother, Gotabaya, serving as president – where the benefits of Chinese economic entanglement in the country were placed under intense scrutiny.
With this in mind, the CCP understands the need to establish a more permanent presence in Sri Lanka, one that can endure even without the Rajapaksas in office. It was with this reality in mind that the Sri Lanka-China Buddhist Friendship Association was established in August 2015, coinciding with the presidential and parliamentary defeats of the Rajapaksa dynasty in elections that year. Now, through this association, and through the Faxian Charity Project in particular, China can channel soft power into the country, helping to rebuild its image and retain influence. As recently as January 2023, China’s charge d’affaires to Sri Lanka, Hu Wei, was in attendance at a Faxian Charity Project initiative to hand out food in Kandy, as well as to warn against Sri Lanka inviting the Dalai Lama to the island. With a new government in Colombo, these soft power efforts will only increase as Beijing attempts to gain a much-needed edge in the competition for influence on the island.
The opinions expressed are those of the contributor, not of the RSAA.
