Maldives opposition raises alarm over China's 'secret military operations' in guise of agri project
The Maldivian Democratic Party says a Chinese-built agricultural zone on an island near a naval harbor is cover for military construction, days after a Chinese research vessel's port call already unsettled India.
The Maldives' main opposition party has accused the government of allowing China to disguise military construction as an agricultural development project on Uthuru Thila Falhu, an atoll on the northern side of the Maldives closest to India. The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) said the state-run Maldives Industrial Development Free Zone (MIDF) signed a memorandum of understanding on March 28, 2024 with China's Harbor Engineering Company to build what is officially described as a large-scale agriculture project following land reclamation on the atoll.
They're not coming to plant trees. There's a strong MNDF harbor in front of there. They're coming in front to do military work.
MDP chairperson Fayyaz Ismail made that accusation, according to Business Today, pointing to the Maldives National Defense Force harbor situated near the project site as evidence the stated agricultural purpose does not match the location chosen. The opposition further accused President Mohamed Muizzu's administration of "bringing distant superpower China to the region and trying to disrupt the peace and stability of the Indian Ocean."
The company behind the project
China Harbor Engineering Company, the firm named in the MoU, previously built Sri Lanka's Hambantota port, which Beijing later took control of after Colombo defaulted on the debt used to finance it — a case widely cited as a template for Chinese port-project leverage. The reporting retrieved for this account also states the company was targeted by U.S. action in 2020 over its role in militarized island-building in the South China Sea, though the specifics of that action were not detailed in the source.
A research vessel raised the temperature first
The opposition's alarm followed a separate episode weeks earlier: a Chinese research vessel was allowed to dock in Malé after President Muizzu's first state visit to China in January 2024, a port call that had already drawn scrutiny from geostrategists over Beijing's marine survey activity in the Indian Ocean. Later reporting identified a Chinese vessel active in the region in 2024 as the Xiang Yang Hong 03, which departed the Chinese port of Sanya in January bound for a deep-sea survey mission described officially as scientific research on behalf of China's Pilot Ocean Laboratory.
What it signals
The MDP's specific complaint is not simply that China is building something in the Maldives — Chinese-financed infrastructure has been common there for years — but that the stated civilian purpose does not match the site chosen, next to a national defense force harbor, and follows a research-vessel visit that outside analysts already viewed as blurring the line between scientific survey and military reconnaissance. Coming so soon after Muizzu's China visit, the sequence reflects a broader tilt in Malé's foreign policy that the opposition is using as a domestic political attack line as much as a security warning; neither the Maldivian government nor Beijing had, in the reporting retrieved, issued an on-the-record rebuttal to the opposition's military-purpose allegation.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by Business Today and UNISCI. It restores a story originally published on this site in April 2024; figures are as reported at the time.