China’s newly appointed Defence Attaché in Sri Lanka, Senior Colonel Fu Xiao, paid a courtesy call on Deputy Minister of Defence Major General (Retd) Aruna Jayasekara on Monday, with the two sides discussing bilateral defence cooperation and identifying maritime security as a key area for collaboration.
The meeting at the Deputy Minister’s office in Colombo was the second high-level engagement of Senior Col. Fu Xiao since taking up his post — he had earlier called on Defence Secretary Sampath Thuyacontha at the Ministry of Defence on June 6. The Deputy Defence Attaché and the Naval Attaché of the Chinese Embassy in Colombo accompanied him for Monday’s call, the Ministry of Defence said.
Jayasekara acknowledged China’s longstanding cooperation in military training and the professional development of the Sri Lankan armed forces. He outlined the country’s current strategic shift away from a land-based force posture and towards enhancing Maritime Domain Awareness, the Ministry said, while reaffirming Sri Lanka’s commitment to a balanced, non-aligned foreign policy.
Both sides identified future areas of collaboration, including maritime security work targeting drug trafficking, arms smuggling and human trafficking, alongside technology integration, training and simulation programmes, and disaster management.
The discussion lands in the same week that Defence Secretary Thuyacontha has been engaged on the same maritime security agenda with other partners, including bilateral talks in Moscow on Indian Ocean cooperation and joint forums on regional maritime security capacity. Sri Lanka’s recent senior defence diplomacy has increasingly framed the Indian Ocean as a strategic theatre where Colombo prefers to engage all major powers in parallel rather than align with any bloc.
