Ports, Cinnamon and the Supply Chain of Sri Lanka

Now, the location, it's Sri Lanka.

It, it's, it's, it's a country that sits off of the south tip or the southern tip of India, uh, surrounded com- uh, it's essentially an island.

There is some channel islands that used to connect the country of India to Sri Lanka, um, but the water levels have risen, you know, over hundreds of years, and so they're now just little dotted islands that live in the, they call it technically the land bridge that used to connect the two countries.

Now, it sits be- halfway between the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca, and it's the main Asia-Europe shipping lane that passes just off of its southern coast.

Ships are visible from the beach and also my hotel, which I have a couple of photos, which I'll add in here during the editing process, or you can see the cranes in the background, and that's just a small view of the cranes at the Port of Colombo.

This is a country that, especially in this area, there's lots of construction going on, and even off in the distance you can see some of the, the older, more historic buildings that look like they come right out of an English village.

For folks who may not be aware, this, you know, the British had, you know, a very famous history with colonialism, and it definitely impacted the area of India and Sri Lanka.

And so you can see some of that history still remaining in not, not just the architecture that exists on the island itself, but also in some of the geopolitical tensions that have, you know, affected the country negatively over the past, you know, say 100 years since a lot of those, uh, you know, uh, I don't wanna say efforts, but a lot of those issues were, were going on, and a lot of those issues still remain to this day.

Now, the port outside of our hotel window is, is the Port of Colombo, and it handles a, it handled a record of 8.3 million TEUs in 2025, uh, that's according to the Sri Lanka Ports Authority, and over 80% of it is transshipments.

So, uh, that typically means that cargo that isn't going to Sri Lanka at all, it's giant ships that drop containers off at Colombo's deep water berths, where smaller feeder ships carry them to the India ports or the Indian ports that are too shallow for the big vessels.

Colombo is basically a sorting hub for all of South Asia.

Even during the, you know, more historical days, I'm reading this book right now, you can see it in the background.

It's called A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World.

And even back in the days where, where China, the country was pretty closed off, as far as like their, their exports and their, how they handled shipping out of their goods, the furthest that they went was to Sri Lanka.

And so the, it kind just rings true about, you know, Sri Lanka being this country that, not just today, but for hundreds, even thousands of years, has been this country where a lot of different cultures and a lot of different meeting points have taken place because of that just super valuable trade lane that they sit right smack dab in the middle of.

Now, the other port that everyone kind of argues about is further south.

It's called Hambantota.

It's, uh, one of the most...

It's famous for its 99-year lease to a Chinese company.

The media calls it a debt trap dip- diplomacy, debt trap diplomacy.

Try to say that alliteration, you know, five times fast.

But the operational reality here is it's quietly, quietly becoming a car-moving machine.

And for e- For folks who may not be aware, China has this Belt and Road Initiative that they have been deploying all across the globe for the past decade or so, where they come into a country, they offer to build up your ports, your infrastructure, your roads, your bridges, all of those things like that, and they basically take a piece of that pie.

Now, if you can't, you as a country, if you can't pay back your debt in a timely manner, then within the lease itself, China typically will dictate that they can now own that port, own that infrastructure, and then the people of that country have to pay an even higher toll.

And so this is a way that China has kind of gained soft power, is investing in all of these different countries and their infrastructure, something that I would argue that the US has- should have been doing for a long time, but for whatever reason hasn't.