Can China, Sri Lanka mend ties with Maithripala Sirisena's visit to Beijing?

Politics may stop at the water's edge, but that's where geopolitics begins. Last year saw high drama over the South China Sea. This year, it's the Indian Ocean that is emerging as the new theatre of power struggle, and Beijing will look to arrest the drift in ties there as it welcomes Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena today.

Ever since Sirisena came to power defeating Mahinda Rajapaksa in January's presidential elections, Beijing has had to deal with a series of setbacks as Chinese-backed projects have come under scrutiny for their links to corruption-tainted Rajapaksa. A US$1.4 billion reclamation project, in particular, has been put on hold, driving a wedge between China and Sri Lanka.

China has warned of consequences for future investments and relations have looked to worsen. Yet for China, Sri Lanka has never been more important. With its man in Colombo out of the picture, Beijing is under pressure to move quickly to find new ways to engage a country where its strategic interests remain just as vital, yet its diplomatic clout is on the slide at a time when competing powers are circling.

Being equidistant from East Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Sri Lanka is an important component of Xi Jinping's "New Silk Road" strategy of increasing China's economic ties with neighbours to the west and southeast.

"China is becoming increasingly dependent on energy flows and trade through the Indian Ocean region, which has become crucial to our energy security. Last year China imported more than 300 million tonnes of crude, 80 per cent of which came from the Gulf region," said Hu Shisheng, a South Asia expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

Since a major driver of the New Silk Road policy is developing the backward and landlocked western areas in China by integrating them with the rest of the region, oil supply routes through the Indian Ocean can only be expected to get busier.