Asia’s largest rivals, China and India, are upping their game in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent visits to Kenya (6-7 January), the Maldives (7 January), and Sri Lanka (8-9 January), New Delhi’s recent extension of a line of credit to Bangladesh to buy more Indian arms, and its decision to develop the oil tank farm in the north-eastern Sri Lankan city of Trincomalee highlight Sino-Indian competition in the IOR, which stretches from Africa to Australia, as does the fact that both countries will develop the strategically vital Colombo Port.
Geography gives India a strategic advantage in the IO, but that is insufficient to counter China’s growing influence in the region. India’s main strategic interest is its immediate IO neighbourhood in South Asia.
Geographically China is not an IO power; its shores are in the Pacific, and its security priorities are East Asia and the Western Pacific. But its economic and military progress has empowered it to expand its influence from the Straits of Malacca to the east coast of Africa. China recognises India’s geographical edge in the IO but has warned that the ocean is not India’s backyard.
While claiming to protect its economic investments along the Silk Road, China has increased its military footprint in the IO. Indeed, its 2015 Defense White Paper stressed the link between strategy and economics by confirming “the new requirement of safeguarding national security and development interests”.
What explains the interest of India and China in the IO?
Parts of the ocean comprise India’s maritime territory. Attempts by India and China to expand their influence in the IO highlight the strategic and economic importance of these international waters. Most Chinese and Indian trade and oil imports traverse the IO, so maritime security is a strategic and economic imperative.
India’s development of the oil tank farm in Trincomalee is premised on the assumption of a 50 percent increase in its domestic oil consumption by 2030.Energy-hungry China buys nearly half its oil from the Middle East. Access to ports in the IOR is therefore among its economic and security priorities. China wants to ensure that the sea routes from Europe, Africa and the Middle East are not dominated by hostile powers including India and the US. So it has developed ports from Myanmar to Kenya. They include Chittagong in Bangladesh, Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Kyaukpyu in Myanmar, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya. The Chinese-built Kipevu Oil Terminal at the Port of Mombasa is expected to be operational by April 2022. Added to these since 2017 is China’s first overseas base, in Djibouti. All these ports have enlarged China’s global influence and promoted its strategic interests, far away from the Pacific, in the IO.
How India and China Project Power in the IO
Trade and investment are among the main instruments which India and China are using to enhance their clout in the IO area. Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aligns its partners economically with China, India is concerned that all its littoral state neighbours, including friendly Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as well as hostile Pakistan, which contests India’s claim to Kashmir, are on board.
China became the primary arms seller and investor in some IO countries long before the inauguration of the BRI in 2013. For example, it established itself as the main arms vendor to Sri Lanka during that country’s civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2009. Currently, it is also the top weapons retailer to several IO states, including Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan, China’s BRI has simultaneously pushed forward its trading and strategic interests. To project power in the IO, China has gained reliable access to naval facilities in key points around the area. In South Asia, all the countries in which China has gained ground have given it access to deep water ports.
New Delhi is also investing more in the IOR, especially in infrastructure. It has signed logistical pacts with Oman and France, strengthened maritime ties with Mauritius, Seychelles, Mozambique and Madagascar. In January 2022, China suggested the holding of a forum on the development of island countries in the IO to create consensus for common development.
Both India and China have tried to show how their projects—for example, in the Maldives—benefit local communities. Meanwhile, in October 2020, Colombo asked Beijing for a $90 million aid grant, which was personally delivered by Chinese Communist Party Politburo Member Yang Jiechi. China lauded the “timely grant”, to be used for medical care, education and water supplies in Sri Lanka’s rural areas and “contribute to the well-being of [Sri Lankans] in a post-COVID era”.
If China needs to overcome a reputation for ensnaring countries in its ‘debt trap’, India needs to overcome a poor record of implementing projects in neighbouring countries, for example, the Teesta project in Bangladesh. Generally, India must strengthen its capacity to implement major infrastructure projects in littoral states and islands scattered around the IO.
China’s naval strength in the IO is greater than India’s. The People’s Liberation Army Navy can deploy more sea-based aircraft. China has moved submarines, destroyers, special operations forces and guided-missile frigates into the IO.
The Indian Navy has significantly increased its deployment of warships, submarines and other assets in the IOR, but the extent to which India can deploy advanced technologies will have a bearing on its status as major South Asian and IO power. India also needs to modernise its armed forces—especially its navy.
China’s growing influence goes against the Indian vision of an IOR where security rests on the balance of power rather than dominance by any single country—whether that is the dominance of the US or China. This is an important reason why New Delhi has signed logistics agreements with the US, France and Australia to counter China’s naval presence beyond India’s immediate maritime neighbourhood.
However, to counter China successfully in the rough seas of the IO, India’s arms sales, military strength and partnerships must be accompanied by more economic investment and trade with countries in the region. The economic slowcoach India faces tough competition in the IO not least because its defence spending—$72.9 billion in 2020—lags far behind that of China’s $252 billion. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, India’s economic decline was adversely affecting its ability to prioritise foreign policy goals in its South Asian regional and maritime spheres of influence.
Moreover, arrogance, red tape and piecemeal payments are bad ways of dealing with neighbours like Sri Lanka, which are saddled with debt and desperately in need of money to pay for imports while fighting the pandemic—especially when they are simultaneously approaching China for funds. In such situations, by dispensing largesse India could gain politically against China.
All told, Beijing’s mix of economics, strategy and building of a world-class navy throws down the gauntlet before India because China is already a major player—second only to the US—in the enduring Great Game in the IOR. That is the hard fact ‘aspiring’ India has to face about its Chinese competitor in the Indian Ocean.
Anita Inder Singh is a Founding Professor of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution in New Delhi.
The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy or the National University of Singapore.
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Books and Journals
Hegemonic stability in the Indo-Pacific: US-India relations and induced balancing
International Relations, December 2021
By Jan Hornat, Head of the Department of North American Studies, Institute of International Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
The United States has improved relations with no other country during the Trump administration as much as it advanced its relationship with India. US-India relations have arguably marked their historical high points since Trump entered office and India seems to be overcoming its suspicion of closer cooperation with the US. Given these developments, this article aims to theorize the relationship through the hegemonic stability theory and explain US strategy toward India. We first demonstrate why India is accepting the hegemonic standing of the US in the Indo-Pacific and then – since balance of power politics are still a staple of policymakers’ approach to stability in the Indo-Pacific – we introduce the notion of induced balancing to show what approach the United States has adopted to empower India to expand its balancing capacity vis-à-vis China. The last section of the article empirically maps the various incentives that Washington offers to New Delhi in order to situate it in the desired position of a proxy China-balancer.
Compiled and sent to you by Centre on Asia and Globalisation and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
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