In recent years, the strained political relationship between India and China has simmered beneath the facade of economic cooperation, manifesting in diplomatic jibes and military sabre-rattling. The prevailing framework of relations is one that former Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao aptly labels ‘combative coexistence’, wherein conflicting national imperatives compromise bilateral relations but do not immobilise the broader economic cooperation necessary for growth.
Yet, although Sino-Indian differences appear manageable, Mearsheimer suggests that no measure of amity is sufficient to ameliorate the onset of ‘intense security competition’ when an ‘aspiring hegemon appears in Eurasia.’ While such hardline neo-realist takes are debatable, it is apparent to any informed observer that the expansion of Chinese power has profoundly impacted continental geopolitical configurations. India’s response has hinged upon ‘limited hard-balancing’ strategies, combining internal-balancing by military enhancement with external-balancing through alliances to minimise the growing Indo-Chinese power differential. While the Himalayan ‘Line of Actual Control’ remains the primary flashpoint of this animosity, the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is steadily developing into the next major theatre of military competition between these Asian monoliths.
The IOR Revival
US-Navy Admiral Alfred Mahan’s 1897 claim that ‘whoever controls the Indian Ocean will dominate Asia’ has become something of an adage amongst geopolitical analysts. Historically, the IOR has served as one of the world’s most significant trade domains, today accounting for approximately one-third of the world’s cargo traffic and two-thirds of its oil shipments. It is therefore critical to regional stability, particularly the security of international Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs), facilitating access to tradable commodities and critical resources.
The IOR has, for several decades, been erroneously analysed through the lens of the continental divisions between South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Alternatively, from a policy perspective, it is not unusual to amalgamate the Indian and Pacific Oceans by integrating the thalassic geography of East and South Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Western Pacific Ocean into a single super-theatre: the Indo-Pacific. However, adopting the view of an independent theatre (the IOR) is arguably more conducive to discussions on the Sino-Indian rivalry. Since 2015, both nations have reoriented their naval strategies to anticipate greater engagement across this maritime domain in particular. The IOR therefore represents the primary extra-territorial intersection of Indian and Chinese geopolitical objectives.
The Indian Perspective
As the resident naval power of the IOR, with a 7,500-kilometre coastline and 212 active ports, India depends heavily on the Indian Ocean, with the region being vital to its national security. In recent years, geostrategic deliberation in New Delhi has been largely dominated by discussions on China, with particular emphasis on the maritime dimension of the rivalry. Meanwhile, Delhi’s growing ambition in the direction of positioning India as a regional net-security provider has necessitated increased maritime posturing throughout the IOR, reaffirming its perception of the Indian Ocean as a growing theatre of foreign policy engagement.
The Indian Navy’s 2015 strategic doctrine entitled ‘Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy’ delineates India’s maritime areas of interest as stretching from the East African Coastline to Western Indonesia, focusing particularly on India’s territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zone. The strategy also calls for increased ‘sea control’, a fundamentally defensive agenda ensuring that Indian or partnered naval forces possess regional command of the IOR necessary for unimpeded military or commercial maritime communications, largely via control of underwater, surface, and airspace environments. Meanwhile ‘sea denial’, a more offensive agenda, involves degrading the ability of rival naval forces to operate in a defined maritime space for a specified time period. At an operational level, such an approach may be utilised for the purpose of SLOC interdiction, limiting the offensive capabilities of rival actors. Simultaneously, the accompanying SAGAR Initiative demonstrates India’s commitment to upholding maritime security and freedom of navigation, consolidating its position as a reliable guarantor of regional stability. As a critical component of its Neighbourhood First Policy, SAGAR adopts a collaborative approach to tackling the IOR’s unique regional issues, with a proactive focus on its immediate neighbourhood.
Threat perception is a key determinant of Indian maritime strategy, and, accordingly, its chief objectives represent a concerted effort to safeguard national interests with a multi-dimensional IOR agenda. Chiefly, the perceived ‘strategic encirclement’ of India by Chinese investment in hostile states, particularly Pakistan, is a major concern for New Delhi. Moreover, Indian naval analysts emphasise the threat posed by the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) growing ability to control strategic choke-points such as the Straits of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb. Even limited disruption of a single choke-point would adversely affect global shipping, impacting the volume of traffic at other such bottlenecks, thereby exacerbating existing economic and security vulnerabilities at these locations.
Cooperative Security Architecture
The ambitious re-orientation of India’s IOR approach remains limited by a number of practical shortcomings, particularly its naval capacity. Currently, the PLAN is the world’s largest with 370 ships and submarines, projected to expand to 435 by 2030. Comparatively, Indian naval figures are less impressive, with a force level of 150 vessels, which, based on its 15-Year Indigenisation Plan, will increase to approximately 200 vessels by 2030.
Speculation that the dramatic disparity in both current and projected force levels would compel India to enter into some form of tactical naval entente has been substantiated by the advancement of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD). As an informal partnership between India, the US, Japan, and Australia, the ‘Quad’ represents the latest major development in the cooperative security architecture of the IOR, and a significant component of India’s defensive framework vis-à-vis China. Despite its inception as a cooperative humanitarian relief platform, the Quad has steadily developed into a forum for both developmental and regional security collaboration. Its latest Joint Statement re-affirmed members’ commitment to ‘upholding principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity’, as consistent with the rules-based international order. India has been keen to leverage the Quadrilateral Partnership for its broader security needs, as indicated by bilateral military exercises with Australia (AUSINDEX), Japan (JIMEX), and the U.S. (TigerTRIUMPH) between 2023-2024. Most notable, however, are the Quad’s Malabar exercises, the latest edition of which is set to take place in the Bay of Bengal in October 2024, and will reportedly prioritise bolstering military interoperability with advanced anti-submarine manoeuvres and tactical drills.
Naturally, Quad activities in the direction of cooperative maritime security are legitimately concerning for China, even though the Partnership has exercised caution in its avoidance of direct references to the PRC. Therefore, while the QSD is being effectively utilised by India in an apparent attempt to counterbalance China’s growing IOR footprint, it may act as a potential accelerant for hostilities by antagonising China and fuelling its perception of regional anti-Chinese belligerence.
China’s Vested Interests
In 2015, a defence white paper published by the Chinese government reoriented its IOR strategy, shifting its approach from near-seas defence to far-seas protection and force projection. Such a transition arguably represents a departure from passive deterrence, and movement towards greater sea control through naval deployment and the establishment of localised military superiority.
Notably, China’s naval ambitions are inextricably linked to its regional commercial interests and investments, which render a comprehensive IOR presence not only strategically prudent, but necessary. As correctly noted by Chinese strategist Zeng Xingkai, the rapid expansion of China’s economic interests in the Indian Ocean since the turn of the century has resulted in a commensurate increase in its vulnerabilities. According to recent estimates, 62% of China’s oil and 17% of its natural gas imports transit via the Malacca Strait, a critical strategic chokepoint in the IOR on account of the US and Indian deployment capabilities in the region. Consequently, a large proportion of the PRC’s key imports are shipped through SLOCs controlled by rival states, a veritable Achilles heel in its hegemonic ambitions.
The ‘Malacca Dilemma’ exemplifies the impetus to China’s evolving approach towards the IOR. It appears that to the greatest extent possible, China aims to avoid transporting critical resources from the Middle East via the Malacca Strait by establishing alternative SLOCs across the IOR. In conjunction with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure development model, which is organised on the basis of six economic corridors, China hopes to circumvent the limitations of strategic choke-points by expanding its regional footholds. Consequently, PRC-funded port construction is ubiquitous throughout the IOR, particularly along routes such as the China-Indochina Peninsula Corridor (Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Malaysia) and the China-Pakistan Corridor (Xinjiang Province and Pakistan).
Available evidence therefore suggests that China’s reoriented approach is not ad hoc, but representative of a well-conceived and formalised doctrinal effort to secure its interests in the IOR. This has manifested as the ‘Two-Ocean Strategy’, which delineates the PLAN’s primary deployment zones as the Western Pacific and Northern Indian Ocean (from the Middle East and African coasts to the Malacca Strait), notably in direct conflict with India’s self-identified ‘primary areas of interest’. Such a strategy involves the deployment of two oceangoing fleets centred around aircraft carriers, a designated Pacific Fleet and Indian Ocean Fleet, the latter of which would likely be based on key islands of the South China Sea or partner states in the Northern IOR. From a maritime security perspective, the Two-Ocean Strategy would be best defined as a form of ‘forward edge defence’, establishing an arc-shaped strategic zone for potential deployment to secure critical import SLOCs in the IOR, in addition to key Pacific routes for its export-driven economy.
Escalating Hostilities
In March 2024, India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar re-emphasised that Indo-Chinese differences extend beyond the Himalayan border dispute, citing the growing Chinese naval presence in the IOR as a legitimate and reasonable cause for concern. Meanwhile, Chinese officials are quick to remedy potential misnomers by asserting that the ‘Indian Ocean is not India’s Ocean’, in effect clarifying Beijing’s position in the IOR through the rejection of conflicting claims by other regional players.
Maritime activity data collected via the Windward Intelligence Platform indicates that the last four years have seen Chinese survey vessels execute thousands of hours of operations. In its report on China’s ‘dual-use’ survey exercises, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies identified 64 active research vessels deployed in the IOR, over 80% of which exhibited ‘suspicious’ behaviour. While it is true that oceanographic research efforts are not exclusive to China, and the PRC is certainly not unique in its approach to employing oceanographic data to support military programmes, it is the scale and timing of Chinese activity that warrants greater scrutiny. For instance, in March 2024, maritime analytics provider ‘Marine Traffic’ placed the Chinese research vessel Xiang Yang Hong-01 in the Bay of Bengal amidst India’s test of its 5,000-km range Agni-5 ballistic missile. Later, the deployment of the survey vessel Yuan Wang-03 in the IOR coincided with India’s announcement of a missile test from Abdul Kalam Island off its eastern coast.
Furthermore, recurrent instances of transponder broadcast ‘failures’ aboard Chinese vessels paired with ‘spoofing’ (false identification information) invite scrutiny. In fact, the alleged ‘dual-use’ of research vessels has previously been acknowledged by Chinese officials, who during the commissioning of the ShiYan-06 agreed that the ship would provide “scientific and technological support for homeland security”. China’s undersea intelligence-gathering operations demonstrate Beijing’s ambition of developing offensive and counter-offensive capabilities to prevent interdiction of its trading routes during a broader crisis-scenario.
Looking Forward
Indo-Chinese competition in the IOR appears set to become increasingly confrontational, as 2025 will reveal the culmination of a decade of strategic reorientation by both nations. Overall, it appears that threat perception, namely perceived security and economic vulnerabilities, underlie their geopolitical agendas. For India, the expansion of China’s presence across the domain represents a territorial security hazard in its immediate neighbourhood. Conversely, for the PRC, India’s regional sea-control aspirations jeopardise both the integrity of critical SLOCs and its broader geopolitical ambitions. In their respective development of comprehensive deployment capabilities and security networks across the IOR, Sino-Indian interests become fundamentally incompatible and potentially internecine. It would therefore be unsurprising to the informed observer if their pursuit of regional goals generates potential for greater bilateral conflict.