Enter The Dragon

China is determined to demonstrate its oft-repeated assertion that the Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean. And Maldivian president Yameen is happy to be the medium through which this message is being delivered

- Shyam Saran

The domestic political crisis in the Maldives may have created fewer waves in India had it not, concurrently, opened the door for Chinese naval power to entrench itself among the islands strung south of the Indian peninsula. President Abdulla Yameen’s regime in Male has—since the illegal ouster of Nasheed in a coup in 2012—systematically sought to reduce political, security-related and economic engagement with India even as it has invited Chinese presence, which has rapidly expanded. It began with the cancellation in 2013 of the Male airport project contracted to the Indian firm, GMR, and its award shortly thereafter to a Chinese company. Maldivian property laws were changed in July 2015 to allow foreign ownership of land, provided the investment was at least $ 1 billion and 70 per cent was land reclaimed from the sea. With China’s experience in large-scale island building through reclaimed land in the South China Sea, one need not speculate about the likely beneficiary of this new law. In November 2017, on a visit to Beijing, Yameen signed a Free Trade Agreement with China and followed it up with ratification in record time. Chinese and Saudi investors are developing the ambitious iHavan project on the northern island of Ihavandhippolu, not far from India. It will boast of a modern port, an airport, a cruise hub, a marina and a dockyard. And there are reports that China may build another port on the southern atoll of Laamu with the eventual aim of turning it into a high-end resort for Chinese tourists, who now constitute the largest number of visitors to the country.