It took a high-ranking Indian diplomat, foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai, dispatched by Delhi, to soothe the political tension in the Maldives.

On 16 February, Mathai announced the start of talks agreed by the two sides whose standoff threatened to tip the country into chaos: former president Mohamed Nasheed, forced to resign on 7 February by a police mutiny; and his successor, former vice-president Mohammed Waheed Hassan. Mathai's intervention is significant; a crisis in the Maldives is one of India's nightmares and it is making full use of its diplomatic resources to restore calm.

For a decade China has been busy in the Indian Ocean, a crucial transit zone for maritime trade between eastern Asia and the Middle East. Beijing has secured various positions by building port facilities. Gwadar and Hanbatota (respectively in Pakistan and Sri Lanka) form the first part of the "string of pearls" extending into the Bay of Bengal thanks to similar infrastructure in Bangladesh and Burma. Many strategic experts in Delhi fear India may one day wake up to find itself "strangled" by this Chinese necklace. The China-Seychelles deal late last year for construction of a Chinese naval base fuelled India's anxiety.

Beijing has courted the Maldives too. "China has always been very keen to gain a foothold in the Maldives," says Ahmed Shaheed, a former foreign minister. "It's enough to alarm both India and the United States," adds a former head of national security.

At the end of the 1990s a defence agreement between China and the Maldives – then ruled by the dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom – was signed "in a secret place", according to an official of that era. It provided for military co-operation and arms supplies. But the matter went no further and the Chinese did not succeed in establishing a base on the islands. Beijing has maintained its pressure with offers of cultural co-operation, via the Confucius Institute, and aerospace and telecommunications contracts fronted by various organisations.

India is constantly on the watch to discourage Malé from yielding to Chinese overtures. Nasheed, elected at the end of 2008, was strongly pro-Indian. Admittedly, he agreed to the opening of a Chinese embassy in the Maldive capital – diplomatic relations previously having passed through Sri Lanka – and to the construction of thousands of homes by a Chinese firm. But the connection focused largely on trade.

According to a well-informed source, India and the Maldives sealed a secret memorandum while Nasheed was in office, agreeing to keep any powers potentially hostile to India at a distance. Nasheed confirmed such an accord: "We have always categorically stated that we do not want foreign powers, in particular the Chinese, interfering in the Indian Ocean." He did not prolong a defence pact with China, signed by his predecessor Gayoom, which was due for renewal in 2009.

The question bothering India is whether Waheed, some of whose supporters have adopted anti-Indian positions, will carry on as before. China is still waiting in the wings.

This article originally appeared in Le Monde