"A Chinese Company Reshaping the World Leaves a Troubled Trail", 19 Sep 2018

CCCC, Belt and Road’s biggest builder, is besieged by allegations of fraud, corruption, and environmental damage. Only the sink remains along what was once an outer wall of Fernando’s seafront home on the west coast of Sri Lanka…Part of his thatched-roof house…suddenly washed away last year. The dredger he blames… Waves used to wash sand in, he says, but now they only wash it out, tearing away the shoreline—a charge government officials deny…The sand is being dumped along the coast of Colombo’s business district…It’s the foundation of a development known as Port City Colombo being built by China Communications Construction Co., or CCCC…The project is part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative…

The biggest cost so far is the environmental damage along a 175-mile stretch of coastline north and south of Colombo and the impact on 80,000 households that make a living from the sea. Sri Lanka’s Environmental Foundation warned two years ago that building Port City would have a “severe and highly detrimental” impact on the coastline, causing erosion and affecting marine biodiversity, fishery stocks, and breeding sites. Government officials issued a 421-page environmental impact assessment before the project was restarted, stating that studies “clearly establish” that it won’t cause erosion…

A hunger strike by fishermen in 2016 resulted in an agreement forcing the dredgers farther offshore…Travel up the coast and you hear fishermen talk about a 20 percent decline in catch and hardships that threaten to wipe them out. “Our future is now being destroyed,” says Aruna Roshantha Fernando, the president of the All Ceylon Fisher-folk Trade Union and a leader of the hunger strike…