Maldives Election Results Empower a Critic of China

By Mike Ives

President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, center left, of the Maldives, along with former President Mohamed Nasheed, center right, at an election campaign rally in Malé, the capital, this month.

HONG KONG — A political party led by the president of the Maldives appeared to have won decisively in parliamentary elections over the weekend, a result that may help him restore political freedoms in a strategically important country with an authoritarian past.
The president, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, had won a resounding victory in presidential elections last September.

But parts of his party’s agenda have been stymied because some of its allies in a governing coalition are aligned with a former strongman leader, Abdulla Yameen, who has been widely accused of corruption and repression.
The Maldives, a chain of islands southwest of India, has traditionally fallen within New Delhi’s sphere of influence. 

Yet it also stretches across maritime routes that are crucial to China, and Beijing has recently spent hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure projects in the Maldives.
Critics have warned of the Maldives falling prey to “debt-trap diplomacy,” meaning that it could be pressured to offer security concessions to China as repayment for large loans. 

Politicians, as well as Western and Indian diplomats, have warned that a growing dependence on China could be a threat to the country’s sovereignty.
Some political analysts saw the victory last year for Mr. Solih, who has been skeptical of China’s influence, as good news for India’s interests. 

On Sunday, a news article in the Economic Times, an Indian newspaper, described the M.D.P.’s parliamentary rout as a “shot in arm” for New Delhi in its “neighborhood.”
Preliminary results from Saturday’s vote showed that the Maldivian Democratic Party, which Mr. Solih leads, was on track to win more than two-thirds of the 87 seats in the country’s parliament, the local news media reported on Sunday. 

The M.D.P. needs just 44 seats to become the first-ever party to secure a parliamentary majority since the Maldives held its first free election in 2008.
Other parties won fewer than seven seats each on Saturday, the Maldives Independent, a local news site, reported.
Past elections in the Maldives have been marred by accusations of widespread irregularities. 

Mr. Yameen was accused of rigging last year’s presidential elections by forcing employees of state-owned companies to vote for his party, stacking the election commission with loyalists, locking up opposition leaders and canceling voter registrations.
But Transparency Maldives, an election watchdog, said in a statement on Sunday that the previous day’s vote had been “transparent and generally well-administered.”
Mr. Solih said in a statement over the weekend that the country’s people were the election’s “biggest winners.”
“That our campaign was issue-oriented and not based on hatred and narrow divisions is a win for our young democracy,” he said. 

“That our government did not hinder those candidates with whom we did not agree is a big win for the country.”
The Maldives made international headlines last winter when Yameen, the president at the time, set off a political crisis by declaring a state of emergency and sending troops to surround the Supreme Court. The move came the week after the court overturned criminal convictions against nine of Yameen’s opponents.
One of them was a former president, Mohamed Nasheed, a member of the M.D.P. who was then living in exile in London. 

Mr. Nasheed, who returned to the Maldives in late 2018, was ineligible to run in the September election because he had been sentenced to prison under the Yameen government.
Mr. Solih ran for president in Mr. Nasheed’s place.
On the campaign trail last year, Mr. Solih pledged to restore democratic freedoms if he won, including rolling back an anti-defamation law that Yameen had introduced as a tool for locking up opponents.
The anti-defamation act was repealed two months later. 

But Mr. Solih’s party, the M.D.P., has struggled in recent months to carry out other parts of its agenda.
For example, even though Mr. Solih has promised to investigate the 2014 disappearance of Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla, a prominent journalist critical of Yameen, a party in the M.D.P.’s governing coalition refused in February to call a vote on a bill about recovering stolen assets and investigating unresolved murders.
Yameen, the former strongman president, was recently imprisoned over a graft scandal involving the country’s tourism board. 

He denies the accusations and was released on bail in late March, days before the parliamentary elections.

China loses its temper amid building tension

China has blown up at Australia, accusing a prominent senator of attacking it with “unwarranted invective” and “blatant slander”.
By Sam Clench

Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells has come under fire from China over her remarks.

CHINA has lost its temper with an Australian senator, accusing her of attacking it with “unwarranted invective” and “blatant slander”.
On Friday, Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells issued a grim warning in The Australian newspaper, saying China was using “debt-trap diplomacy” to build its influence among the Pacific Island nations neighbouring Australia.
She claimed China was tempting poor countries with loans they couldn’t afford to repay — a strategy far less sinister than military expansion, but no less effective.
“Today, the sovereign threat is less confrontational but the debt-trap diplomacy just as insidious,” Ms Fierravanti-Wells wrote.
“Pacific countries need to use limited government reserves to meet their loan commitments to avoid defaulting. 

“Domestic spending and important social programs are jeopardised.
“Consequently, the internal stability of these countries may be affected and greater demand is placed on overseas development assistance from countries such as Australia.

“In short, Australian taxpayers effectively will be subsidising repayment of loans to China.”
Ms Fierravanti-Wells has previously accused China of funding “useless buildings” and “roads to nowhere” in the island nations.
China has indeed showered countries such as Vanuatu, Tonga and the Solomon Islands with loans in recent years. 

Between 2006 and 2016, it invested $2.3 billion in the region, according to analysis from The Lowy Institute.
But in a scathing response to Ms Fierravanti-Wells, China rejected any implication that its motives were not pure.

This isn’t the first time China and Australia have sparred over the Pacific Islands issue. 

Earlier this year, Beijing’s state-run media went so far as to label Australia an “arrogant overlord”.
The biggest fear among China’s Australian critics is that it will use its financial leverage for nefarious means.
“Such indebtedness gives China significant leverage over Pacific Island countries and may see China place pressure on Pacific nations to convert loans into equity in infrastructure,” The Lowy Institute warned.
“It’s not win-win for China and the recipient, but simply win for China, which not only gets access to local resources and new markets, and forward presence, but can coerce the recipient state to pay a ‘tribute’ to Beijing by ceding local assets when it can’t pay back its debts.”

Vice President Pence’s Churchill Moment

President Trump administration just ‘reset’ the U.S.-China relationship
By Josh Rogin

Vice President Pence speaks about China at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Thursday.

The Trump administration has now publicly unveiled its plan to fundamentally shift U.S. strategy toward China. 

It’s an important acknowledgment that U.S.-China competition is heating up, an overdue admission that the past approach has failed and a national call to action.
Vice President Pence’s landmark speech on U.S.-China relations on Thursday was notable for two reasons. 

First, it called out the Chinese government for perpetrating a multi-faceted, well-resourced and shady campaign of foreign influence operations on U.S. soil. 

Second, it placed that campaign in the context of a global competition between the United States and China that is being waged on every continent and in every realm.
Set aside Pence’s claim that the Chinese government is targeting President Trump’s political interests (which is true). 

The speech’s real significance was its promise that the United States will newly confront Beijing’s worldwide economic and strategic aggression, oppose its internal repression and compel the Chinese government to change its behavior on both fronts.
“We will not relent until our relationship with China is grounded in fairness, reciprocity and respect for our sovereignty,” Pence said, promising the Trump administration will “reset” the bilateral relationship in a fundamental way.
The vice president laid out a litany of ways the Chinese Communist Party spreads influence inside the United States and around the world. 

Pence linked China’s economic aggression, military adventurism, influence operations and authoritarian expansion to argue that Beijing long ago decided to abandon true cooperative engagement with the United States and therefore we must respond.
“We want a constructive relationship with Beijing,” he said. 

“While Beijing has been moving further away from this vision, China’s leaders can still change course.”
The speech is a culmination of nearly two years of work inside the Trump administration to identify, expose and confront increasing Chinese-government-sponsored efforts to interfere in all aspects of American public life, including politics, policy, academia and journalism.
Pence correctly connected those efforts to Beijing’s plans for economic and strategic expansion, which include unfair trade practices, debt-trap diplomacy in the developing world, economic espionage, and the exportation of an “Orwellian” social credit system that enforces censorship and compels loyalty to the Communist Party for all who seek access to China.
On Friday, President Trump will unveil a major study into vulnerabilities in the United States’ defense-industrial base. 

I obtained an advance copy of the report, which found that our military is beholden to products from China, and Beijing has intentionally sought to undermine America’s ability to control the resources crucial to building the weapons we rely on.
“A key finding of this report is that China represents a significant and growing risk to the supply of materials deemed strategic and critical to U.S. national security,” the report states.
That was written before this week’s revelation that the People’s Liberation Army implanted tiny chips on components used by dozens of U.S. tech companies, the most significant known attack on the U.S. supply chain.
The new China strategy merges the realism of national security adviser John Bolton, the strategic positioning of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the economic nationalism of White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and Vice President Pence’s values-based advocacy. 

It would have been unthinkable coming from the pro-China Obama administration.
In fact, Barack Obama’s senior official, Jeffrey Bader, wrote last month that concern over the China threat in Washington was overblown and the approach of “disengagement” with China was wrongheaded.
That’s a straw-man argument — because nobody is arguing for “disengagement.” 

Rather, there’s a growing consensus in Washington that Beijing’s flouting of international rules and norms must end, and engagement must be based on a clear-eyed acknowledgment of Beijing’s intentions and actions. 

There’s no desire in the Trump administration to provoke a confrontation with China, a senior administration official told me, arguing that it’s Beijing’s activity that is causing the deterioration in the relationship.
“The notion that this somehow represents disengagement is just dead wrong. It’s the opposite,” the official told me. 

“It’s saying to the American people that we need to wake up to this. And the Chinese need to wake up to the fact that if they continue to pursue this policy — which is unacceptable — there will be consequences.”
Hoping China’s rise would be constructive while ignoring Beijing’s bad behavior didn’t work. This course correction in the U.S.-China relationship is absolutely necessary to protect American interests and values.

Whether that causes undue friction or hostility between the United States and China is largely up to Beijing.

How China tried to shut down Australian media coverage of its debt-trap diplomacy in the Pacific

• A Chinese Embassy official yelled and made demands of an Australian producer to try and censor an episode of "60 Minutes" that would be critical of China.
• The Chinese Communist Party regularly interferes with foreign Chinese-language media, but targeting English-language media is rare.
• The "60 Minutes" report covered China's debt-trap diplomacy in the Pacific, including a loan to Vanuatu for a wharf which could be used by the Chinese military.
• Vanuatu's foreign minister said China expects support at the UN in return for financing.

By Tara Francis Chan

Five days before Australia's "60 Minutes" program aired a report on China's dept-trap diplomacy in the Pacific region, the show received an unusually aggressive phone call.
"Take this down and take it to your leaders!" the voice on the other end of the line shouted.
It was the voice of Saixian Cao, the head of media affairs at China's embassy in Canberra.
According to a report from "60 Minutes" journalist Charles Wooley, she was yelling at the show's executive producer, Kirsty Thomson, after failing to gain any traction with higher-ups at the network.
"You will listen," Cao reportedly shouted into the phone.
"There must be no more misconduct in the future."
Thomson and colleagues had been working on a story about China's growing influence over Pacific nations, by using exorbitant loans for infrastructure projects that leave countries indebted to Beijing, both politically and financially.
The story largely focused on China's projects in the island nation of Vanuatu — where the show's team had also recorded footage of the Chinese embassy — and the official was trying everything to kill the story.
"You will not use that footage," Cao demanded.
The incident highlights how China is used to dealing with — and controlling — the Australian media.
Chen Yonglin, a former diplomat at the Chinese Consulate in Sydney who defected in 2005, told Business Insider that this happens frequently with local Chinese language media in Australia and that, ultimately, the incident in Australia would have originated in Beijing.
"The instruction to pressure Channel 9 is from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministry obviously believed it is necessary. The representation is to warn Channel 9 and other people not to act like that again," Chen said.
Chen also described how monitoring, and attempting to censor media coverage, is a regular occurrence.
"If it's a local Chinese-language media, the Chinese Embassy/Consulate official should call the Editor-in-Chief directly with serious warning and certain sanctions against this media may follow. For less serious cases, China may request to publish a statement from its Embassy."
Business Insider previously reported how diplomats at a Chinese consulate in Australia invited an advertiser in for an hours-long "tea chat" to convince them to stop funding independent Chinese-language journalism.
Another advertiser had Chinese intelligence and security agents physically camp out in his Beijing office to strip funds from critical media.
And last year, two South Korean journalists who followed President Moon Jae-in's trip to Beijing were physically beaten and severely injured by more than a dozen security guards.
Despite the lengths China often goes to influence and outright interfere with foreign media, Chen believes Cao could face repurcussions for crossing a line.
"All Chinese language media are very obedient. Shouting at local Chinese media is not a surprise, but [shouting] at one of the mainstream English media is rare. Saixian Cao could be punished for her behaviour such as being given an internal warning," Chen said.

China gave Vanuatu a loan 360% more expensive than other options

Part of the "60 Minutes" episode highlighted a Chinese-built wharf in Vanuatu that has gained international attention.
Earlier this year reports emerged that China discussed setting up a military presence in Vanuatu, a claim both countries denied but which Australian defense officials confirmed.
And the country's newly built Luganville wharf, which was funded by China and seems more suited to navy vessels than cruise ships, would be crucial to this.
The fear is that Vanuatu, like many countries before it, accepted a loan with exorbitant interest rates and may need to hand over the wharf to China if it defaults, a practice called debt-trap diplomacy.
The country can't even afford the cleaning or electricity bill for a $19 million, Chinese-built convention center.
Yet Vanuatu took an $85 million loan from the Export-Import Bank of China for the Luganville wharf, which is topped with a 2% interest rate, that needs to be repaid within 20 years. 
But a similar wharf project in Port Vila, which was funded with a Japanese loan only required a 0.55% interest rate and gave the country twice as long to repay it.
Business Insider contacted Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu with questions about these loans last week but has not yet received a response.
When Sri Lanka defaulted on its loan for a Chinese-built port, it gave state-owned China Merchants Group a 99-year lease which experts believe was a strategic acquisition in the region.
China expects supporting votes at the UN in return.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi speaks at a Security Council meeting during the 72nd United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly at U.N. headquarters on September 20, 2017 in New York City.

Not only are there concerns that China is trying buy access to facilities and sea routes throughout the Pacific, Vanuatu's foreign minister confirmed Beijing's influx of cash has very, and immediate, global consequences.
Asked by "60 Minutes" whether he thinks China is trying to buy votes at the UN, Regenvanu answered in the affirmative.
"What so you think if they can pump money in here, they'll get support at the UN?" the reporter asked.
"Yes," Regenvanu answered.
"I'm sorry, that's bribery."
"Uh, maybe, that's diplomacy," Regenvanu said.
Australia has been trying to counter China's attempts at foreign interference both locally and in the Pacific, with new and expanded laws currently before parliament.
Last month, an Australian MP and chair of parliament's intelligence and security committee publicly identified Chau Chak Wing, a Chinese-born, Australian billionaire and political donor as having funded a $200,000 bribe to a former UN General Assembly president in order to advance Chinese interests.





Beijing henchman Chau Chak Wing