Bracing for a Chinese storm in the Indian Ocean

Inscrutable China

A quiet but steady Tsunami is building in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), qualitatively different from the one that hit 20 years ago but orchestrated by China through its trade, energy dependence, frantic maritime dual-use port construction, unleashing massive surveillance, flooding the region with arms sales, and power projection.

In 2012, China’s 18th Communist Party Congress passed a resolution for “building a strong maritime nation”. Since then, China’s maritime footprint is expanding to include trade, energy imports and exploration, fisheries, marine transportation, shipbuilding industry, naval build-up, search for bases abroad, and others. China is currently building its maritime power and making efforts to create an alternative maritime order. At the conceptual level, even though China is not an IOR state, it floated the “China-Indian Ocean Region” initiative for building a “maritime community with a shared future”.

China has become a major trading partner for the 38 Indian Ocean states. Since the 2013 launch of the Maritime Silk Road, China has a naval support base at Djibouti, 24 maritime ports under construction of which nine have been completed, and five maritime outposts in the IOR. These include the 99-year lease of the Kyaukphyu port which connects with the oil and gas pipeline to Yunnan and expansion of dual-use infrastructure in Coco Islands in Myanmar, a 99-year lease of Hambantota and Colombo Port Terminal in Sri Lanka, a 45-year lease of Gwadar in Pakistan, Payra and Chittagong in Bangladesh, Darwin in Australia, and others. These agreements come in handy for China to exert pressure to dock its ships. In 2014, for instance, a Chinese submarine docked at Colombo port and surveillance ships at Hambantota.

China is building at a cost of $29 billion three railway lines to Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, eventually connecting to Laem Chabang Port in the Gulf of Thailand. Thailand and China are also planning a “land bridge” to connect the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand.

China conducted surveillance missions and cyber warfare in the IOR, expanded naval arms exports to Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan, besides signing military aid agreement with Maldives, in March 2024. However, in September 2019, India expelled the Chinese research vessel Shi Yan 1 after it was found operating without permission in India’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI).

China’s navy is now the world’s largest at 370 vessels, aspiring to grow to 435 by 2030. India, in contrast, aspires to acquire 175 ships by 2035 from the current 132. China has sent 46 naval contingents to the Indian Ocean since 2008, some of which conducted amphibious operations and air defence exercises that are not relevant for counter-piracy operations in the Somali coast, thus violating its UN Security Council commitments.

At any given time, China has eight to ten warships deployed in IOR, apart from research or spy vessels and many illegal fishing vessels. It despatches a submarine every month and in 2020, executed the use of unmanned underwater drones to map the ocean floor around the ANI. With three aircraft carriers, with a plan to have 11 in all, China is poised to send carrier task force patrols to the IOR by 2025.

It is estimated that China gets more than 80 million tonnes of fish in the Indo-Pacific through illegal fishing that violates Article 56 of the international maritime laws under the UNCLOS. Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing has become a major problem. It is in this context that the Quad launched in 2022 Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness to combat IUU fishing and monitor “dark shipping”. In July this year, the Quad foreign ministers meeting at Tokyo decided to take concrete measures in this regard.

To protect its maritime interests, India initiated its first joint integrated command, the Andaman & Nicobar Command (ANC) in 2001. It protects 600,000 sq km of EEZ in the region that is about 30% of India’s 2 million sq km. Yet, the security situation is becoming complicated with China’s naval forays. China’s leader Mao Zedong once observed: “whatever the enemy has, we should have”. The ANC should deploy the most modern equipment and skills to safeguard not only India’s national interests but also the “preferred partners” in the region.

India needs to adopt a comprehensive strategy and take steps to protect its maritime interests and the Ten Degree Channel, boost its Act East Policy by leapfrogging from the ANI, build world-class infrastructure (including a transhipment facility at Great Nicobar), evolve connectivity between ANI and Sabang Port in Indonesia.

India also needs to enhance unmanned underwater drones and long-endurance submarines for deterrence operations, assist in capacity build-up and conduct surveillance, search and rescue operations with South East Asia and enhance conventional and strategic capabilities at the ANC.