The Indian Ocean Region has increasingly become a crucial juncture to the ongoing strategic competition within the broader Indo-Pacific. Engagement from regional powers like India is insufficient and China’s growing influence is a worrisome development. Even extra-regional powers like the US have been unable to match the surging influence of a growing and assertive China.
China’s outreach in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has been distinct and comprehensive. China perceives the region to be one continuous zone that secures its sea lines of communication through the Indian Ocean to Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Under the playbook of China’s “Two Oceans Strategy”, the role of IOR has been evolving in securing the passage of raw materials, which if interdicted, could wreck its pursuit of regional hegemony.
China is keen on mobilising its military and naval resources in the Indian Ocean region (IOR) to secure supplies of oil and gas from the Gulf region and to maintain a steady flow of merchandise exports to European countries. Actuating its military in the IOR is also prompted by the fear of an overarching Indian presence in the region, backed by the US, which might end up encircling and controlling these vital trade arteries through the region.
Commensurate with China’s commercial and strategic goals within the Indo-Pacific, there has been a re-evaluation of its strategy from “near-seas defence” to “open seas projection”, which Beijing consistently demonstrates by undertaking non-military operations in the Indian Ocean.
China has been augmenting its outreach towards the small island nation states, anchoring its diplomatic outreach to address non-traditional security challenges like climate change, infrastructural development, or counter-piracy interventions. To that end, initially, China has deployed PLAN, PLAAF, PLAA, and SSF in the region to handle the problem of maritime security operations including anti-piracy missions, counter-terrorism ops, HA/DR, and peacekeeping missions. But gradually these issues have become a manoeuvre to strengthen its naval footprint in IOR.
In 2020, PRC deployed its 34th, 35th, and 36th naval escort task forces to the Gulf of Aden to conduct counter-piracy operations. During this, PLAN operated continuously for 170 days covering 100,000 nautical miles in the sea, setting up a new record. Under the cloak of anti-piracy missions, Chinese military leeway into Africa smoothened, through the Indian Ocean. In the pretext of tackling non-traditional security issues, China’s strategic aspirations in the IOR become more noticeable.
China inaugurated its first military outpost in Djibouti in August 2017 aiming to build a “logistical hub” that can accommodate aircraft carriers, frigates, and more specifically “Yuzhao-class LPDs, Type-901 AORs, and future Type-075 LHAs” naval vessels. Likewise, it negotiated an agreement with Pakistan authorities to turn the defunct facility at Jiwani into a naval outpost and airfield for the Chinese.
Such efforts at turning “pearls” into basing facilities for naval panoply suggest Beijing’s outreach does not stop at addressing anti-piracy concerns, but in militarizing the region by recalibrating its strategy to “sea-control” to prepare itself against any possible maritime interdiction by the US, India and other regional powers. Even though such efforts have reduced piracy in the region, but covering these dividends, PLAN has also gained experience in off-shore operations with the biggest returns in “back-end logistical, administrative, and infrastructural setups, which have evolved into well-coordinated mechanisms for supporting the pre-, post, and actual deployment activities of the successive task forces”.
In addition to these basing options, China maintains economic leverage over Sri Lanka and Myanmar through its port development activity by exploiting their defaults in loan repayment to seize ownership of the port for a long time. Sri Lanka’s Hambantota and Myanmar’s Kyaukpyu port attempts to rekindle shipping activities in the former, while using the latter for overcoming its Malacca dilemma by diverting oil supplies through overland routes. Although Chinese aims seem limited, Beijing irks New Delhi by dispatching submarines and “research vessels” in the Bay of Bengal, challenging the latter’s regional hegemony. Such naval intrusions challenge India’s dominance, seeking to collect critical intelligence and oceanic data to supplement Chinese revisionist tendencies.
Beijing’s altruistic proposals are also reflected in its engagement with Strategic Island Nations like Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius, Madagascar, and Comoros. As these Island nations are more concerned about non-traditional security issues, China’s strategy thus focuses on pumping renminbi to support infrastructural and commercial development in these small states. While bearing their debt burdens, China infused funds in these economies to support smart city projects, built complexes, and healthcare infrastructure along with sponsoring measures to wipe out bacterial diseases.
Funds poured into Mauritius valued at $750 million while Seychelles received $7.5 million to kick-start infrastructure projects. In reciprocity, Seychelles has offered its Mahe islands to China for military activities, while other countries have offered to set up intelligence units. Significant funds were diverted to Madagascar to revitalize its torn economic and commercial infrastructure, while in Comoros, Beijing aimed to erase Malaria from the country. Notwithstanding these, China has also gripped Ethiopia and Kenya in its foothold, by seeking to construct infrastructure under the BRI scheme to potentially bridge the region with the African continent; a region that fails to feature in the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy.
The concerted pushback from India and the US against Chinese incursion in IOR has mostly been haphazard. Despite the very notable shift of the US towards the Indo-Pacific, the US still prioritizes the Western Pacific at the expense of the “Indo” portion. The small island states feature low in priority in the US strategic design for the region. Unlike the Pacific Ocean, the US “Shiprider” security agreement has failed to make any notable mark in the IOR except for Seychelles. Policy measures undertaken by the Biden administration to cement its ties to the traditional allies and partners acknowledges Pacific problems and engineered newer multilateral mechanism like Quad and AUKUS to address their deepening security anxiety against Chinese threat; the same strategic preparation is lacking in IOR.
Its infrastructural outreach to gather intelligence through the region is at a subpar level when compared to the Chinese. Apart from laying down underwater fibre cable optics around Diego Garcia, no other progress has been made in the region. Diplomatically as well, the US has been lagging. It holds only three missions and two defence attaches among all the major seven islands. Dividing the entire IOR into three separate units namely the INDOPACOM, CENTCOM, and AFRICOM ends up limiting the US military’s potential to a unified power projection in the region towards mitigating the non-traditional security issues.
India has been the primary modus operandi for the US to project its power in the Indian Ocean Region. In 2009, Robert Gates, Secretary of Defence, proposed India to take the role of “net-security provider” in the region. However, diverging interpretations of security role and ambivalent division of labour is an impediment to a more holistic approach to address challenges in IOR and the assertiveness of China.
The Indian Navy, unlike their Western counterpart, has shown more keenness to embrace the leadership role in the form of “preferred security” partner to dispel any small states concerns of growing Indian security role. India’s constant reluctance to assume a more assertive role in the Indian Ocean, limits any possibility of success of a concerted unified approach towards the region from Washington and New Delhi. In recent years, India is trying to make further inroads into the region harping more on economic and diplomatic engagements; but unlike China, India could not find its efforts metamorphosing into strategic gains.
New Delhi has been backing off from further aligning with the US in the region, as it does not want an extra regional power to push off its influence and hold the mantle of power. However, the need for Washington and other partners in weaning off Beijing’s influence in the IOR is a crucial requisite for New Delhi. This dilemma reinforces the lack of strategic consensus between New Delhi and Washington on the IOR which has eased up the process for China to make its mark more entrenched and tangible.
Rahul Jaybhay is a PhD candidate at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He also works as a Research Analyst for Asia Society Policy Institute, New Delhi; Anondeeta Chakraborty is a postgraduate student at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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