The Maldives' pro-China opposition candidate Mohamed Muiz defeated incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in a presidential runoff election on Saturday that was widely billed as a contest of influence between New Delhi and Beijing.
Muiz, the 45-year-old mayor of the capital Male and member of the pro-China People's National Congress, won about 54 percent of the vote, according to tentative results released by the election commission. Solih, 61, of the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party, who has pursued closer ties with India, secured about 46 percent of the vote.
The Indian Ocean island nation is located on sea lanes between the Middle East and Asia, with India and China locked in a power struggle to expand their influence.
The Maldives has traditionally maintained deep military ties with India, but Muiz is expected to seek to lessen his country's dependence on New Delhi and attach more weight to its relationship with China.
Muiz was backed by former President Abdulla Yameen, who in his tenure between 2013 and 2018 drew the nation closer to China by participating in the Asian power's signature Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.
Solih, who has been president since 2018, suffered a blow as his ties with Mohamed Nasheed, the Maldives' first democratically elected president, soured, leading the influential figure to leave the Maldivian Democratic Party.
In an interview with Kyodo News, Nasheed warned of his country falling into a Chinese "debt trap," a criticism leveled at the Chinese initiative for saddling developing nations with debt and allowing it to leverage control over them.
Nasheed has also called for relations with India and Japan to be maintained as they share values such as democracy and human rights, arguing that "abrupt changes in foreign policy are not in anyone's interest."
