China’s massive security build-up in Tibet, and the excellent road, rail and airfield infrastructure that it has created there would give it the edge in any future border conflict with India. Not surprisingly, India’s security planners worry that Beijing could initiate a short, sharp war to grab a chunk of vital territory, such as Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. This would give Beijing the advantage of possession in negotiations with India; show the world that China can slap down India whenever it chooses; and send out a warning to Southeast Asian nations which dispute maritime boundaries with Beijing. India’s attempts to match China in the frozen hills have struggled, with its plan to build road infrastructure mired in inter-agency confrontation.
China’s advantage on land, however, is offset in the Indian Ocean. The Indian peninsula and the island chains of Lakshadweep and Andaman & Nicobar dominate the international shipping lanes that carry West Asian oil through the Malacca Strait to Chinese ports. As vital for China’s economy is the flow of manufactured goods that are shipped back along the same route to markets in Africa, West Asia and Europe. The navy has in the past couple of months commissioned a new naval air station at Campbell Bay in the Nicobar Islands, which is reachable from Delhi by the new Hercules C-130J cargo airplanes; and another on the island of Kavaratti in Lakshadweep, consolidating its control of the shipping routes. An Indian naval blockade of China’s oil and trade flows would take time to bite — especially given that China is building up a US-style Strategic Petroleum Reserve — but it is agreed that a longish Indian blockade would have a calamitous effect on China’s economy.
Demonstrating Beijing’s sophisticated understanding of power, China’s visiting defence minister, Liang Guanglie, had detailed discussions last Tuesday with his counterpart, A K Antony. Much of the talk centred on maritime issues, especially cooperation between the two navies, which already work together in anti-piracy operations off West Asia. China, preoccupied with countering the new US “rebalancing to Asia” — a polite phrase for an increased military presence in the South China Sea and the Western Pacific — cannot simultaneously confront India in the Indian Ocean. For the Indian navy, this represents the gratifying culmination of an effort that began in 2004. That year, finding no response from the ministry of external affairs and the prime minister’s office to its pleas for a coherent maritime policy in the Indian Ocean and Asia Pacific littoral, the navy unilaterally issued a naval doctrine, and followed up with a naval strategy document. In 2008, the navy initiated the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, a biannual seminar-cum-summit that brought together regional navies to discuss “regionally relevant maritime issues.” Over the years, as China has loomed larger, the MEA and the National Security Council (NSC) clambered on board. Today, India has evolved a balanced and coherent maritime strategy, with the multiple aims of: preventing super-power conflict in regional waters, which would be a disaster for everyone’s economies; supporting the right of navigation and free passage by all parties even in contested waters; and, de facto, a leading role for India as a gatekeeper for the northern Indian Ocean.