How Muizzu’s profligate embrace of China’s debt trap imperils the nation’s sovereignty

The paradisiacal veneer of the Maldives’ sun-drenched atolls belies a storm gathering on the horizon – a tempest unleashed by the reckless policies of President Muizzu’s regime that jeopardize the very sovereignty and economic autonomy of the island nation. In an uneven bargain driven by hubris and shortsightedness, Muizzu has shackled the Maldives to an ever-tightening noose of Chinese debt entanglements.

His injudicious plunge into Beijing’s neo-colonial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has granted the Chinese a foothold from which to erode the Maldives’ strategic independence through calculated debt-trap diplomacy.

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