China to strengthen Maldives ties after election
Says its foreign ministry
China said yesterday it would seek to strengthen ties with the Maldives, after pro-Beijing President Mohamed Muizzu's party celebrated a landslide win in parliamentary polls in the strategic Indian Ocean nation.
The Maldives, known as a luxury tourist destination with its white sand beaches, also straddles key east-west international shipping routes -- with the election win bringing the archipelago deeper into Beijing's sphere of influence.
Muizzu's People's National Congress (PNC) secured more than two-thirds in the 93-member parliament on Sunday.
"China is willing to work with the Maldives to maintain traditional friendship (and) expand exchanges and cooperation in various fields," foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said yesterday.
Muizzu, 45, won last September's presidential poll as a proxy for pro-China ex-president Abdulla Yameen, who was this week freed after a court set aside his 11-year jail term for corruption.
Muizzu's back-to-back election successes have hinged on a sustained campaign against India's former political clout in the Maldives.
In January Muizzu visited Beijing -- its largest external creditor --- where he signed a raft of infrastructure, energy, marine and agricultural deals.
Beijing, Wang Wenbin said, aimed to "continuously deepen the China-Maldives comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership" as well as "accelerate construction of a community with a shared future for China and the Maldives, and better benefit the two peoples."
Muizzu's party was an eager recipient of financial largesse from China's Belt and Road infrastructure programme, a central pillar of President Xi Jinping's bid to expand China's clout overseas.
That push has seen Beijing increasingly play an outsize role in smaller regional nations' elections, including last week in another archipelago -- the Pacific nation of Solomon Islands.
In those polls, the incumbent prime minister fell short of an outright election majority, with the pro-Beijing Pacific leader Manasseh Sogavare now seeking allies to forge a coalition.
Sogavare is seen as one of China's most loyal friends in the South Pacific and his negotiations to forge a government will be closely watched from afar, with major consequences for Beijing's push into the South Pacific.