The travelers pouring off flight LV199 from Shanghai into the international airport of the Maldives, many dressed in designer labels, are an unmissable sign of China’s interest in the far-flung archipelago.
Their arrival — Chinese visitors are now the biggest group of tourists to the Indian Ocean islands — has been accompanied by greater diplomatic engagement in the Maldives by Beijing, which is investing widely around South Asia.
Recently married Chen Hui and Fang Ye, 20-something business executives from near Shanghai, are returning for their second trip and heading to a resort by speed boat where over-the-water bungalows start at $500 a night.
“Most of our friends come here on their honeymoon,” Fang told AFP, who said they were looking forward to doing some fishing and posing for photos on the white sands that draw nearly a million visitors a year.
The Maldives has been promoted as a destination in the Chinese media, she said, with the Islamic republic benefiting from its status as an “approved destination” by the Communist Party government.
Chinese visitors now comprise nearly a quarter of all tourists annually, triggering a recruitment race for Mandarin-speaking hosts, waiters and diving instructors at five-star hotels.
Across the water from the airport island lies the cramped capital Male, where Chinese aid paid for the Foreign Ministry, a waterfront building built in the shape of sails that evoke the nation’s sea-faring character.
In the Sultan Park neighborhood stands the two-story national museum, another gift from China that opened in 2010.
Beijing has opened an embassy, giving it a permanent diplomatic presence — and better access to the frequent Chinese swimming casualties who underestimate the dangers of the country’s turquoise waters.
“I think we will do our best to develop our friendship and cooperate in the economic field,” Chinese ambassador in Male, Yu Hongyao, told AFP in an interview when asked about Beijing’s vision for relations.
“Gradually we will give aid to Maldives,” he said.
The Maldives consists of more than 1,100 islands scattered across the equator, which sit aside the world’s most important shipping channel on which goods from the East travel to markets in the West.
Its strategic location was appreciated by former colonial master Britain, which ran a military base here until 1976, and China was once rumored to be eyeing an uninhabited atoll as a submarine base.
Outgoing President Mohamed Waheed dispatched ministers to Beijing after taking power in 2012 and visited himself later in the year.
The second round of presidential elections at the end of September will therefore be critical for the future trajectory of the country and its eagerness to embrace Chinese aid.
Out at the Anantara holiday resort where tourists Chen and Fang are beginning their holiday, such thoughts seem a world away as they are welcomed at the jetty by a traditional drummer and staff bearing cold face towels.
Employees such as spa attendant Huang Jing Fang are on hand 24 hours a day to cater for their every need.
“Maldives is like a dream place for Chinese people, and me also,” Huang told AFP. “That’s why I came to work here.”