Maldives moving closer to China

C Uday Bhaskar

Director, Society for Policy Studies

THE results of the recent parliamentary elections in the Maldives threw up a big surprise. While President Mohamed Muizzu’s People’s National Congress (PNC) was expected to win, the scale of the victory was unprecedented. Voters of the tiny island-nation (population of about 500,000) in the Indian Ocean gave an overwhelming majority to Muizzu’s party in the 93-member House. The PNC won 66 seats, while its allies bagged another nine, thereby giving Muizzu a super-majority of 75. The electoral mandate gives him the licence to make changes in the Constitution and muzzle the Opposition.

Muizzu will have to nudge the two Asian giants to work collectively to address the red lights that are flashing.

In a complex domestic political churn, Maldivian elections in recent years have seen the emergence of a pro-China faction, thereby posing a challenge to India — which for decades was the principal aid donor and security provider. In a setback for India, then President Abdulla Yameen, who was in office from 2013 to 2018, favoured Beijing over New Delhi. He was accused of embezzlement of funds and corruption and indicted for bribery just before the September 2023 presidential election; the verdict debarred him from contesting.

A last-minute nomination saw then mayor of Male, Muizzu, throwing his hat into the ring against Ibrahim Solih (President from 2018 to 2023) of the Maldivian Democratic Party and winning the election with a slim lead in the second round. Solih was perceived to be empathetic to India. One of the major foreign policy issues was the tussle between the pro-India and pro-China factions.

It is instructive that Muizzu won the election last year on the back of his ‘India out’ campaign. Soon after assuming office, he directed that the Indian presence in the Maldives be reduced. As a first step, the new President compelled New Delhi to withdraw the few military personnel who were stationed in the island nation. Muizzu’s January visit to Beijing, where Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed him as an ‘old friend’, was testimony — if it were required — to the extent to which the Maldives was now looking at China as an alternative to India.

Clearly, despite its long-standing ties with the political leadership in Male, India had dropped the ball in late 2012, when a major infrastructure project awarded to the GMR Group was suddenly cancelled. India was no longer the preferred partner for the Maldives. China, which has long sought a foothold in the Indian Ocean, methodically invested in the strategically located island nation. The latest development will pose a challenge to Indian security planners and hobble PM Modi’s vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All) in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

The docking of Chinese research ship Xiang Yang Hong 3 in Male on April 25 and the disclosure that this vessel had been inside or near Maldivian waters since January would suggest that Chinese naval/maritime presence in this part of the Indian Ocean will animate the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific.

Soon after taking charge as President, when asked if his foreign policy would see a tilt towards China, Muizzu said he would follow a pro-Maldives policy. Major infrastructure projects with Chinese assistance are on the anvil, and the people will be monitoring the tilt towards Beijing to see how this will impact their lives and human security indicators.

The most critical and urgent threat to Maldivian security —nay, its very physical existence as a nation — is the danger of a rise in sea levels. The worst-case scenario is that the Indian Ocean archipelago can disappear when the danger mark is crossed. Experts say that by 2050, as much as 80 per cent of the Maldives will become uninhabitable due to global warming. And the dire warning sounded by the World Bank is that if prevailing regional trendlines of global warming and sea rise are not addressed in an urgent and effective manner, sea levels could increase by 10-100 cm in the future. The net result: by 2100, the entire country could be submerged.

Fortuitously, this issue came into focus amid the declaration of results of the Maldivian parliamentary elections. On April 23, the World Meteorological Organisation released its Climate Asia 2023 Report. The findings are ominous for all forms of life on earth, and the gravity of the threat is stark.

According to the report, the global annual mean near-surface temperature last year was 1.45°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, and 2023 was the warmest year on record. The global average sea levels have continued to rise at a sustained rate of 3.43 mm/year from 1993 to 2023. But the rate of the rise is not the same everywhere.

The rise in the sea levels in the three sectors of the Indian Ocean (north-west, north-east and south-east) was significantly higher at 4.07, 4.44 and 4.19 mm, respectively, than the global average of 3.43 mm. If ever there are ‘pro Maldives’ issues screaming for policy attention, they are climate change and global warming.

With their geopolitical aspirations and anxieties playing out in the IOR, this is a survival challenge for a small nation that India and China must respond to in a collective manner. The claim to major power status and leadership of the Global South by New Delhi and Beijing has been reduced to a brittle and arid binary. Even as their policy planners pursue ambitious hi-tech projects that subsume cyber, semiconductors, artificial intelligence and spectrum domination, the health of the ocean will determine the viability of planet earth being able to sustain life in an equitable manner. Perched on top of the complex life pyramid, the human species will fall first.

Muizzu will have to nudge the two Asian giants to work collectively to address the red lights that are flashing. It will be an arduous challenge for Male to yoke Delhi and Beijing together.

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