Tao guang yang hui is an ancient Chinese saying that means “hide your talents, and bide your time” till the time is right. China followed this strategy to emerge as an economic and military superpower, and is now following the same strategy to emerge as a maritime superpower. The strategy may well transform the hitherto peaceful Indian Ocean Region (IOR) at India’s backyard into a zone of confrontation and conflict in buttressing China’s unlimited ambitions. It is certainly changing the geopolitical status quo in the Indo-Pacific region in a way that may have serious repercussions for India. For the new government that takes office after May, this will be one of the uppermost policy imperatives to address. Despite repeated instances of Chinese insensitivity to our national interests and concerns, our policy towards China has so far been characterized by hesitation and uncertainty, and we have cared for Chinese sensitivities for far too long with an almost deferential respect. It is time to change this attitude and our policy towards China.

As pointed out by Bertil Linter in China’s India War, China’s interest in opening a corridor to the Indian Ocean was as old as 1985, when it was exploring a trade outlet to the Indian Ocean for its landlocked south-western provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou through Myanmar. It had signed a border agreement with Myanmar in 1988, and taking full advantage of the crippling Western sanctions on Myanmar’s ruling junta after the violent military crackdown on democracy there, China extended its largesse to Myanmar through trade, loans, credits and military equipment. The ruling junta reciprocated wholeheartedly, giving China unrestricted access to its key ports and facilities, so much so that even the Myanmar army brass was getting wary of losing their independence. This apprehension and large-scale anti-Chinese sentiments played a role in the subsequent relaxation and partial restoration of democracy in Myanmar, leading to normalisation of its relations with the West after 2010. But by then, China had embarked upon its ambitious venture of creating a “String of Pearls” in the IOR in the form of developing ports and facilities in different countries, to extend its reach to the sea much beyond what was offered by its relatively small eastern coastline compared to the size of the country. Incidentally, the eastern part of China, fed by its three major rivers, hosts a billion people and is far more developed than the rest of China including Xinxiang, Tibetan Plateau, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, where the rest of its population live. The developmental divide has long been a cause for the restiveness in its western provinces.

The ports, that China has helped build and develop, stretch all the way from Gwadar in Pakistan to Obock in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, Lamu in Kenya, Beira and Maputo in Mozambique, Hambantota and Colombo in Sri Lanka, Payra and Chittagong in Bangladesh, Kyaukphyu in Myanmar and Kra Isthmus in Thailand. Obock is also China’s first military base overseas, and Gwadar is probably going to be the next. But for the unexpected defeat of President Abdulla Yameen of Madives, China would have another outlet there ~ in the northernmost atoll of Ihavandhippolhu, where it, along with Saudi Arabia, had invested heavily in the multipurpose iHavan project to develop a new economic zone with a port, airport, cruise hub, marina and dockyard. Now there are reports that China is constructing a second military base in Jiwani, southwest of Gwadar, to expand its footprint in the Indian Ocean. It takes very little effort to turn a port into a future military base. Col. Adarsha Verma of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), in an article, cites Chinese official media reports advocating that the PLA Navy should build no less than 18 overseas naval military bases in the greater IOR, possibly including Chongjin (North Korea), Moresby (Papua New Guinea), Sihanoukville (Cambodia), Koh Lanta (Thailand), Sittwe (Myanmar), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Maldives, Seychelles, Lagos port (Nigeria), Mombasa (Kenya), Dar-es- Salaam (Tanzania), Luanda (Angola) and the Walvis Bay (Namibia). All these will be part of the Maritime Silk Road of China’s overarching One Belt One Road (OBOR) project, through which it wants to project its power even at the cost of upsetting regional stability and peace.

The Chinese strategy has been a combination of military tactics, political patronage, and heavy economic dependency created by Chinese debt to build the port infrastructure in these countries. As shown in my article “Trap of the Century” (October 14-15, 2018), all these countries are heavily indebted to China which gives the latter an overwhelming advantage to dictate terms that secure its military and economic interests, as in Hambantota. As US President John Adams had said, “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.” For China debt has so far been the preferred option, and Chinese loans to most of these countries far outstrip their debt to any other country or international financial institutions like the IMF or World Bank, creating overwhelming economic dependence of these countries on China. As history has shown, political and diplomatic dependence is a natural corollary to economic dependence. Today, barring Pakistan, China does not have practically any friend in the region it can depend on, as Andrew Small said in The China Pakistan Axis, but as witnessed in the South China Sea, China treats all other countries with equal contempt when it comes to assertion of its territorial ambitions. The economic dependence produced by Chinese loans and aid to small countries can ensure that China gets their unequivocal support in international fora, and commands their votes at the UN and other international entities. It has the potential to change the dynamics of the international order, and it is no secret that China harbours the ambition of becoming a superpower, to supplant the present US-led global order, and OBOR is one important part of its strategy towards this end.

In fact, just as Afghanistan was the seat of the Great Game between Russia and Britain in the nineteenth century and between USA and USSR in the twentieth, the IOR is now becoming the seat of a New Great Game in the post-Cold-War era between many powers, past and present. US has military bases in Djibouti and in the British island of Diego Garcia which it used extensively during its Iraq and Afghan wars. France, which is a part of the European Union, possesses several islands in the Indian Ocean including Mayotte, Reunion, Kerguelen, St. Paul and Amsterdam, the Crozet Archipelago and few other small islands around Madagascar, with its exclusive Economic Zone extending over 2.5 million sq. kms in the Indian Ocean. Australia owns Christmas Island south of Java, and Cocos (Keeling) group of tiny islands some 900 kms. farther. In his seminal work, The influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783, American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan had argued that control over the seas is essential for national greatness. Unlike the army and the air force, the navy’s reach is not limited to a territory or around a base. Seas not only provide excellent means for exchange between nations, but an enemy can be effectively neutralised by barring it from access to the sea. The history of colonisation of Asia, Africa and Americas by European powers vindicates much of Mahan’s thesis, and now China seems to be taking a cue from this. A strong navy that can bolster commercial interests, protect trade and control the strategic checkpoints would be the key element in any race for supremacy of power in the IOR, a region that is likely to become the epicentre of global power-play in the twenty-first century.

The Chinese naval strategy, shaped by Admiral Liu Huaqin and articulated as the ‘Far Seas Operations’ aims to transform China into a great sea power, not only capable of protecting its seagoing trade, by also to extend the outreach of its naval operations in the South China Sea and Western Pacific into the Indian Ocean by building a network of facilities and ports, towards which it has already achieved substantial progress.

(To be concluded)

(The writer is a commentator. Opinions are personal)