Shortly after Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited Pakistan promising an upgraded version of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Indian defense minister Rajnath Singh cautioned against any attempt to disrupt peace in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), saying the Indian Navy is the “biggest guarantee of peace”.
Iterating India’s responsibility to protect the IOR, Singh asserted a few days ago: “Our interests extend across the Indo-Pacific region. We have also emerged as the first responder and a net security provider in the IOR. Today, many nations have shifted their focus towards marine resources in the region. If India is to safeguard its commercial and security interests and maintain a strong deep-sea presence, it is crucial to possess state-of-the-art platforms, equipment, and a robust communication system.”
Singh’s statement comes after he laid the foundation stone for a new Very Low Frequency (VLF) station of the Indian Navy at the Damagundam Reserve Forest site, Pudur Mandal, in Vikarabad, Telangana. The facility spans 2,900 acres and is being constructed at a cost of ₹3,200 crore.
In a veiled warning to nations that are involved in maritime trade, the minister said: “The countries with which India shares its maritime borders must understand that maritime security is a collective responsibility. Summoning external forces to one’s doorstep undermines this effort. Maintaining peace and order in the Bay of Bengal and the IOR should be our top priority. The support of all friendly nations is vital in this endeavour, as even the exclusion of one nation could disrupt the entire security framework. India believes in unity, not division. We are taking every step to move forward in cooperation with our friendly neighbouring countries.”
The minister’s caution comes amid China’s assertions to expand its influence in the IOR. The Chinese intrusive forays made India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar to say this August that “India needs to prepare for ‘disruptive; changes in the Indian Ocean”.
Jaishankar made a practical assertion: “I think the Indian Ocean is already seeing the beginnings of maritime presence, which was not there before. So, it is poised for a disruptive change. I think we need to anticipate it (and) we need to prepare for it.” Rajnath Singh’s is thus seen as a follow-up statement.
China has increased its presence in the Indian Ocean, which New Delhi perceives as being within its sphere of influence, by sending its naval and surveillance vessels to ports in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Media reports suggest several surveillance ships have criss-crossed regional waters around the time of Indian missile tests, and experts believe they are also involved in gathering data that would be helpful for submarine warfare.
Though there is a perception in some quarters that for the small and medium-sized states of South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, India has been an inconstant partner, India has of late “sought to greatly increase its defence cooperation in the region to demonstrate its willingness and reliability as a security partner”, analysts say.
China rang in the new year, 2024, with an unsolicited statement about the IOR. The mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, The Global Times, carried an analysis quoting President Mohamed Muizzu of the Maldives as saying, “We are not in the backyard of any particular country. The Indian Ocean “does not belong to any particular country.” The hint targeted India, but a few months later, Muizzu visited New Delhi embracing peace.
Worried about the presence of the naval might of the West in the form of AUKUS and QUAD members, minus India, in the South China Sea, China is eagerly pressing towards the IOR to keep the its trade routes clear.
A Gateway House report of 2021 says: “The IOR accounts for 80% of China’s energy imports and is essential for China’s trade activities, making it a strategically and economically significant geography. For the past three decades, Chinese investment and construction activity in the IOR has increased. Ports, in this context, have become important sites of strategic, economic and political investments for China.”
A maritime map of the region would show 17 ports in the IOR, “which have some degree of Chinese involvement, ranging from “massive projects like the deep-water ports and terminals at Gwadar and Lamu to construction of smaller terminals like the Livestock Terminal at Port Sudan”.
China was directly involved in the construction of 13 of them, through Chinese companies, which are contracted to build the ports and its related infrastructure. The project costs are moderate to extravagant –- from $78 million for Djibouti to $1.6 billion for Gwadar in Pakistan.
An article in the US security magazine, War On The Rocks says of China’s expansionism in the IOR: Ninety-five per cent of China’s trade with the Middle East, Africa, and Europe passes through the Indian Ocean. More importantly from Beijing’s perspective, this region is controlled by Chinese rivals: the United States and India. Since 2000, the Chinese navy’s port visits to regional states have also significantly increased. In 1999 there was not a single PLAN port visit in the Indian Ocean region, however, since 2010 the PLAN has averaged close to 20 port visits a year. Furthermore, China is the only country to set up embassies in all six island nations in the Indian Ocean.
In this context, Rajnath Singh’s statement is backed by India’s policy initiatives to strengthen its naval presence in the IOR, develop maritime infrastructure and enter into cooperative agreements with the nations sharing IOR boundaries.
This is consistent with possibilities that in order to protect its trade routes in the Malacca Strait and the IOR, China may deploy a two-ocean fleet. War On The Rocks quotes Hu Bo, the director of Beijing University’s Center for Maritime Strategy Studies, who claims that “in the future the main zones for the PLAN are first the western Pacific, followed by the northern Indian Ocean stretching from the Middle East and African coasts to the Malacca Strait”.
At the core of his hypothesis is a strong belief of his: “…in order to achieve an effective military presence in both oceans, China should consider deploying two oceangoing fleets, centered around aircraft carriers- [sic] the Pacific fleet and the Indian Ocean Fleet.” The proposed Indian Ocean fleet would be based on key islands in the South China Sea and in friendly countries around the northern Indian Ocean, he writes.
In an analysis on India and the IOR published in 2023 by the Indian Council of World Affairs, the situation arising is summed up: “The reverberations of India’s rise as an economic and military, especially naval, power is felt across the region. India perceives itself as a “preferred security partner” for the Indian Ocean states both in traditional and non-traditional security realm.”