Maldives President Mohamed Muiz arrives for talks with President Xi Jinping amid uproar over Indian tourist canceling trip plans to Maldives over photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a beach in Lakshadweep Islands He was on his way to China. The archipelago faces the devastating effects of climate change and its economy depends on its largest external creditor, China.
One of the key agreements Muiz signed with China focuses on tourism, amid an Indian backlash over controversial comments by some Maldives ministers. Another agreement is on the infrastructure front. However, China has a checkered history of delivering on the infrastructure promises that the Maldives must accept as a pawn in the Asian giant’s Belt and Road Initiative. Given the unequal relationship defined by China’s growing strategic interests in the host country, the Maldives is looking to China’s other Central Asian partners to support the Belt and Road initiative at the expense of high debt and underdevelopment. You can see how your participation has progressed. Nepal’s foreign minister said that despite signing the Belt and Road Initiative in 2017, more than six years later, not a single project has been completed in the mountainous country.
Candidate Mohamed Muiz, backed by jailed former Maldivian president Abdulla Yameen, led an “India Out” campaign, reversing former President Ibu Solih’s “India First” policy. However, unlike India’s approach of development-driven lending to partner countries, China’s strategic investments have allowed it to become economically powerful before controversial laws enacted by Yameen’s government before 2019 were enacted. India was able to lease 17 islands. China’s encroachment on land belonging to Belt and Road partners is a serious problem. And expansionist powers claim much land outside their own borders. In 2022, a leaked report by the Nepali government showed serious encroachments on Nepali territory by China. However, this argument soon lost its luster as the Nepali regime is beholden to its creditor China.
But in the case of the Maldives, foreign interference could mean a halt to infrastructure development, debt-trap “diplomacy” (the Maldives owes nearly $1.3 billion), and the Chinese string of pearls of encircling India. This could pose a serious security threat to India. Located in the Indian Ocean region. The leased island of Feidu Finolhu provides insight into how quickly China can use its leases to threaten India. The island, which was leased by China until 2066, is less than 700 kilometers from India and has grown 2.5 times its original size to 100,000 square meters.
While allied with China, the country is also a center of radical Islamic terrorism, sending more Islamic State fighters per capita than any other country. While some Maldivian survivors are held in camps in Syria, the country hosts large numbers of foreign workers, often from Bangladesh, who account for as little as 20% of the population. Occupies nearby. The country is currently home to narco-terrorism syndicates operating from Pakistan, another of China’s terror-sponsoring partners, and these syndicates are complicit in promoting radical Islamic terrorism against Maldivian youth. Despite former Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s intervention in 2010 to extract a promise not to host Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives, the Maldives has served as a hub for terrorist activities. According to intelligence agencies, this radicalization is working in tandem with anti-India messages along with drug and trafficking activities, and China is happy to turn a blind eye to all this, sometimes even implicitly. We are even providing support. Even though Chinese nationals are the main victims of terrorism in Pakistan, it has been working to revive such groups in the Pakistani-occupied Kashmir territory.
The Maldives economy exists in a fragile balance between tourism, agriculture, fishing, and Chinese debt. Amid a tussle between India and Muiz’s choice of China as his first destination, the island nation is hoping Chinese tourists will make up for the losses from India’s cancellation. Indian tourists became the largest visitor group in 2023, accounting for 11% of the country’s tourism market. China is unlikely to be able to make up the difference in this sector, given the slowdown in its own economy, which is experiencing the long-term effects of coronavirus lockdowns. At the same time, the country, which is on the brink of climate change, was in talks with India about transmitting renewable electricity under the ‘One Sun, One World and One Grid’ initiative. In 2022, the Indian government had provided a USD 100 million loan line for infrastructure projects under former President Sorif. The country’s inorganic “India Out” platform that brought Mr. Muiz to power has left New Delhi with no choice but to remain in the country, although many of its promises will go unfulfilled unless the president strikes a clear balance. Despite assurances from the Maldives, that seems increasingly likely at this stage. A strategic partner.
Significantly, as China hypocritically calls for “external interference” in the Maldives, the anti-India message has taken root in a country where civil society is already grappling with radicalization and youth are being drawn into the drug trade. It is a disservice to India-Maldives relations that there was no other positive message other than equal to counter these sentiments, and a brief yoga event conducted in the country by the Indian High Commission was welcomed. However, it was attacked by Islamists. and 44 other Islamic countries. Soft messaging and government-to-government relations are the least intrusive and most legitimate means of building relations between nations, yet they are far from sufficient to protect India’s interests.
As the Indian government continues to open its doors to the Maldives’ new president, it remains to be seen whether Mr. Male’s belligerence is being instigated by a hostile China, or whether it is appropriate for the Maldives to remain a pawn in a larger game; It remains to be seen whether conditions will be given to the Chinese government. We have had better luck than other BRI partners have had so far.
(Sagorika Sinha is a columnist and podcaster with a background in foreign policy analysis and international relations. When she’s not working on her fledgling YouTube channel, she also writes about domestic policy.)
Disclaimer: These are the author’s personal opinions.