Opinion | China and India need to talk, navy to navy, to prevent Indian Ocean hostilities

Should China and India talk about confidence-building in the Indian Ocean? On the face of it, this shouldn’t be an issue. The Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean. And unlike the Line of Actual Control in the border areas between China and India, which has yet to be verified, the two countries have no maritime disputes in the Indian Ocean.

But the waters in the Indian Ocean are getting warmer, in part because China’s full-fledged maritime Silk Road initiative has attracted India’s small neighbours (to whom India usually takes a “big brother” attitude) and in part because China has taken a strong foothold in the Indian Ocean with a military supply station in Djibouti.

In 2014, Sri Lanka allowed a Chinese submarine to dock in Colombo, triggering fierce opposition from India. Then, in 2017, New Delhi was widely believed to have put pressure on Sri Lanka, a sovereign state, to reject a request from China to let a Chinese submarine dock in Colombo for resupply.

Behind India’s angst is a fear that the Indian military might lose to the Chinese military on all fronts. Indian strategists traditionally believe that in a possible conflict, India may have a disadvantage along the China-India border, but certainly an advantage over China at sea in the Indian Ocean, given the geographic proximity to India.

But such confidence is waning. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, China has built more naval surface ships and submarines since 2000 than India, Japan and South Korea combined. The only question is how soon a Chinese carrier strike group will come into India’s “backyard”.