The Maldives is a small paradise. Why are China and India fighting about it?

Between a few coral spots in the Indian Ocean, a more than a mile-long ribbon of highway emerges from the blue. Since 2018, the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge has connected the hyper-dense capital of this archipelago, Malé, and the international airport – expanded by Chinese companies – to one island in the east.

But China is not alone in seeking friendship with the Maldives. A 20-minute walk through the capital, next to the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital, an even longer sea bridge will connect Malé to the islands to the west. This is being built by Indian workers, with money from India.

The Maldives, a small country of 500,000 that relies on tourism, barely serves as a blip next to India and China, the world’s most populous countries. Yet every bite counts in the two giants’ competition for influence across South Asia, and that has put the Maldives on a zigzagging course between them.

India, at the heart of the vast region, has long been the most powerful economic and military power. Yet China has made significant progress with its much greater financial resources, concluding infrastructure deals and securing access to ports in the countries surrounding India.

The location of the Maldives makes it a strategic priority for both Asian powers. China needs a military presence in the Arabian Sea to secure access to Persian Gulf oil. And India, which has clashed with China along its border, wants to ensure the island’s neighbor Maldives doesn’t get too cozy with Beijing.

In January, India suddenly found itself in conflict with the Maldives over a perceived threat to the island’s tourism lifeline. But the competition between the superpowers in the sky-blue lagoons of the Maldives has yet to come to a boil. Wins and losses are marked more by the leanings of Maldives’ own politicians – more pro-India at some points, more pro-China at others – and especially by the money both parties spend to win over the hearts and minds of Maldives to win. .

From his high-rise office overlooking Malé’s marina, Mohamed Saeed, the Maldives’ minister of economic development and trade, puts his country’s needs in stark terms. The economy is now worth about $6.5 billion a year, of which $6 billion is earned from tourism, and most of the rest from tuna fishing. The goal is to turn it into a $12 billion economy within five years.

The Maldives discovered tourist dollars in 1972 and now attract more than a million visitors a year to the ‘water villas’ that stretch from wooden boardwalks and define the luxury resorts.

The country only became a democracy in 2008, with the election of a charismatic young leader, Mohamed Nasheed. The current president, Mohamed Muizzu, was elected five months ago, in the latest swing of the pendulum between India and China. Mr Muizzu took office after campaigning on an “India Out” platform, which called for the expulsion of around 80 Indian soldiers stationed across the Maldives to provide support.

Mr Saeed, a Muizzu appointee, was also a minister during the last “pro-China” government, when the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge was opened. He oversaw a free trade agreement with China. But today he sticks to the position that Mr Muizzu’s government is merely pursuing a “pro-Maldives” policy.

There is no bias towards China, he says – “we extend our invitation to free trade to all countries” because “we want to get the best value for our tuna.”

Simultaneously pursuing cordial relations with China and India may seem the wisest course of action. But that became more difficult, says Mimrah Ghafoor, a writer and former career diplomat, as both countries stepped up their influence campaigns just as the Maldives was transitioning to democracy.

China has the deeper pockets, with development banks dwarfing India’s. But, Mr. Ghafoor noted, if China “mainly has roots,” India “has both the carrots and the stick.” That’s because the Maldives depends on its nearest neighbors in times of great need.

Mr Ghafoor rattled off a list of crises in which Indian aid proved indispensable, from fighting back a coup from Sri Lanka in 1988, to rescue efforts after the 2004 tsunami, to the delivery of 1,200 tonnes of freshwater by plane and tanker during a shortage of water. in 2014 – a time when the Maldives was led by a China-leaning president.

Beyond money and geography, there is another key difference between India and China as competitors, a difference illustrated during the Maldives flare-up with India earlier this year.

Three young ministers attacked India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media after he promoted his country’s own paradise atoll, an even smaller and much less developed archipelago called Lakshadweep. These “India Out” Maldivians assumed there was a threat to their economy. In the much louder response, nationalist Indians urged a boycott of the islands.

The disruption in relations contrasted with China, which exercises supreme message control. This gives the country the opportunity to effectively negotiate with smaller countries behind closed doors. Beijing may be less comfortable with the Maldives’ new democracy than New Delhi, but it has managed relations just as adeptly.

One staunch supporter of democracy, Eva Abdulla, a senior member of parliament, is proudly pro-India. But mostly it is anti-oscillation.

“It’s clearly not good for us to freak out about foreign policy,” she said. Not in terms of security, and “it does not enable any kind of stability in development projects.”

Ms Abdulla, a cousin of former President Nasheed, said there are many reasons to support India as a partner. She mentions their cultural affinities, such as South Asian democracies. For example, together with hospitals and schools on the remote islands, India is financing a cultural center in Malé to promote yoga and Indian dance.

Mr. Modi’s pro-Hindu policies at home are rubbing many the wrong way in the Maldives, which is supposedly a 100 percent Muslim society. Still, “we cannot afford a fistfight with India,” Ms. Abdulla said. She and the president, Mr Muizzu, whose parties will compete in parliamentary elections in April, agree on this.

Mr Muizzu has stepped up his call for a generic Maldivian nationalism, in favor of the island’s own language and its Islamic values, while avoiding an anti-Indian tone. He has reluctantly kept his promise to expel Indian army personnel, but India has not given up on its development projects.

One of the most visible is a massive airport expansion on Hanimaadhoo Island, an hour’s flight north of Male. It is home to one of the aircraft used by the Indian pilots. And it’s the kind of project that has some Maldivians fearing that their sovereign territory is being groomed as a potential battlefield in someone else’s war.

Hanimaadhoo, with a population of 2,664, appears to have little need for the additional runways being built by an Indian company. This also applies to the few touristy islands in the area. Yet excavators are working 24 hours a day, essentially redesigning the fragile island so it can land huge planes. A similar airport, built by Indians on the other side of the country, makes Hanimaadhoo part of a pattern.

Maldivians are not the only ones who think so. An Indian worker at the site named Ranjit said he thought it was clear why India needed to build a military facility here. “China is coming,” he said. “Don’t you see the Chinese ships getting ready?”

On February 22, the Xiang Yang Hong 03, officially a Chinese research vessel, entered Male. The Maldives government said it was just a port call. But as with the Indian airport projects, the ship left in its wake an air of ambiguity about possible military applications.