President Xi Jinping’s successful consolidation of budding bilateral partnerships with the Maldives and Sri Lanka this week underlines China’s expanding challenge to India’s regional primacy. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to deepen bilateral and global cooperation with China in the formal talks with Xi in Delhi, he can’t ignore China’s growing capacity to limit India’s freedom of action in the subcontinent and the Indian Ocean. For decades, India had to endure the multiple negative consequences for its national security from China’s all-weather partnership with Pakistan and cope with Beijing’s quest for influence in Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. Delhi must now prepare to deal with China’s emergence as the most powerful extra-regional actor in the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
In Malé and Colombo, Xi arrived to enthusiastic welcomes and unveiled China’s impressive plans to boost economic cooperation with both countries. Delhi has no reason to object since India too is inviting China’s investments. After all, China is the world’s second largest economy and the biggest trading partner to most countries in the world. But some of China’s economic cooperation in the subcontinent is coming at India’s expense. The Maldives, which cancelled the Malé airport contract with the Indian company, GMR, has now handed over the modernisation of the airport to a Chinese company.
