They were issued by China’s State Council on March 20, a week before it sent the first delivery of 1,500 metric tons of water in jugs to the Maldives, which is experiencing a scarcity of fresh water. The regulations then went into effect on May 1, weeks before China donated the second batch of water jugs.
China finalized the deal with the Maldives during a November 2023 visit by Yan Jinhai, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, to the low-lying archipelago threatened by rising sea levels. The Maldives has forged strong bilateral relations with China and is a beneficiary of the Belt and Road Initiative, under which it has borrowed more than US$1 billion from Chinese banks in the past decade, according to Western think tanks.