If China’s approach to diplomacy is coercion and debt-trap, India’s “Neighbourhood First” approach is ostensibly aimed at “renewal of the close bond of cooperation and friendship.” This is especially the case with a strategically important country in India’s immediate neighbourhood – the Maldives.
When Ibrahim Mohamed Solih took charge as the President of the Republic of Maldives in 2018, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended his swearing-in ceremony at Male and the two leaders walked virtually arm-in-arm. This was a considerable development – especially because the former President of Maldives, the mercurial Abdullah Yameen, virtually laid out a red carpet for the Chinese, ignoring India’s interests.
Immediately after taking power as the President, Abdullah Yameen signed the Belt and Road Initiative. Heeding Chinese advise, he took large loans from China to build unsustainable, large-scale infrastructure projects as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. He also signed free trade agreements with China. With this, the Chinese companies moved in deftly, built the Velana airport and also the “China-Maldives Friendship Bridge” in record time. As a result, the Maldives debt to China shot up – equivalent to over 25 per cent of their Gross Domestic Product.
For long, the Maldives has been a big part of China’s ‘string of pearl’s’ doctrine – an attempt to circle India with Naval bases. As a result, other Chinese “commercial investments” – such as the fifty-year “lease” of an uninhabited island Feydoo Finolhu in 2016 – have also been a matter of concern for India. Once used by the Maldives police welfare company, the Feydoo Finolhu, an atoll, which an unknown, unnamed Chinese company has leased for $85 million, is just 75 nautical miles from India’s Exclusive Economic Zone and could potentially be a Chinese “snoop station.” It was also rumoured that a radar was being planned on Makhundoo, a nearby atoll.
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