China Sets Up A Military Base At Cocos Islands As Part Of Ambition To Dominate The Indian Ocean  

Despite the era of very efficient spy satellites that can focus on objects the size of a generous handkerchief, China has been proactive in setting up its spying and military facilities in the Myanmar owned Cocos Islands, 300 km off the Myanmar coast. This is with the newly minted junta’s blessings, after it staged a coup in 2021, and got rid of Myanmar’s elected government.

However, the fact is, the Chinese have been present on the islands since 1994, when they apparently leased one of them from Myanmar. The Cocos Islands are just 55 km from India’s Nicobar Islands.

With India’s decision to militarise its presence in a comprehensive manner all along the 638 km of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the present upgrading at one of the leased Chinese Cocos Island assumes special significance. But can it do very much beyond the obsessive spying?

India’s plans for its own territory are far more substantial. It is upgrading the airport at INS Kohassa, Shibpur, in the North Andamans, as well as at the Campbell Airport on Nicobar Island into full-fledged fighter bases. The airport at Agatti in Lakshadweep is being transformed for military operations to secure both the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea up to the Gulf of Aden. Anchorage for Indian Navy ships and those from other friendly countries is being created. Submarine and unmanned underwater vehicle facilities are likewise being strengthened. Drones, UAVs,  surveillance and fighter aircraft facilities, accommodation of personnel etc. are all being transformed. India has truly bitten the bullet on this militarisation.

The islands will now vastly extend the Indian Navy’s reach in the region, 1,000 Km from the Indian mainland, and secure all of triangular India. The armed forces are getting ready to move simultaneously at sea if there is any aggression on our land borders or against our blue water assets.

Lakshadweep sits on the Nine Degree Channel. It lies on the 9 degree line of latitude north of the equator. The Andamans and Nicobar Islands together are being prepared to dominate the Six Degree and Ten Degree Channels towards South East Asia and North Asia. This is being done on a theatre command basis, using a joint Tri-services model so that it can operate efficiently.

 Of late, the Chinese have built updated listening posts, installed new radar and beefed up the runways to receive all manner of military aircraft on Cocos Island. They have built hangars, accommodation, and other infrastructure. All this is plain from Indian and American satellites monitoring the islands.

China has also been flying spy balloons over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, mapping the ocean floor around the area for its submarines, and spying on ship movements in the Bay of Bengal, and along the East coast of India, including its satellite and missile launch sites there.

The Chinese are also seeking to set up a military base on Sri Lankan land near the state-of-the-art Hambantota Port, which China has built and acquired on a 99-year lease. China has been sending its spy ships there as well.

China is also expanding its presence and facilities at cash-strapped Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base.  It is ‘assisting’ the setting up of naval bases at Kyaukphu, Manaung and Haing Gyi in Myanmar, plus at Mergui and Zadaikyi Katan Islands in Thailand.

All this in addition to their other presence in Djibouti, off Karachi in Pakistan, the island of Feydhoo Finolhu in the Maldives leased by it, and via greater access to Iranian ports near the Persian Gulf.

 After recently declaring that the Indian Ocean is not Indian, just because of its name, China is pursuing its goal of trying to dominate the IOR. But China is at a disadvantage with their facilities being built in politically unstable regions that could undergo changes in government and consequent reversals in policy. Besides, The South and East China Seas are not just Chinese.

India is much better off with its tri-services bases coming up in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. One end overlooks the Malacca Straits, just 80 km away, which links the Indian Ocean with the Pacific and oversees the Bay of Bengal. The other end of the islands secures the Arabian Sea.

The islands belong to it, and India’s QUAD/AUKUS and other alliances act as a force multiplier with interoperability and regular joint naval exercises in the region.

China is desperate to find another viable trade route in addition to the well- used if not congested Malacca Straits, that carries some 20% of global trade as well. Other potential routes are at least 1,200 km longer, need to be thoroughly surveyed and mapped for weather, currents, draughts. Lonely civilian cargo ships and tankers are vulnerable to attack from pirates, in the absence of heavy security accompanying. All this puts up the Chinese costs.

Unfortunately for China, it is not possible to definitively secure the Malacca Straits exclusively for itself. It is an international passageway through another country and is used by many nations.

China has been trying to interest Thailand in creating a new sea route between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific by ploughing through a narrow water-way, Suez Canal style, at the Kra Canal. The proposal is being talked about, but it hasn’t got very far. It has, in any case, been pending for over 70 years. The Kra Canal is meant to slice through the Malay Peninsula about 800 km south of Bangkok, to connect the Gulf of Thailand with the Andaman Sea.

Do either China, or a politically turbulent Thailand, have the money to get this done in the present straightened circumstances? President Xi Jinping led Red China, which now accounts for half the total global debt, along with the United States, also has precarious finances caused by a drastic shrinkage of its exports. Its domestic construction companies and manufacturing facilities have crashed and domestic consumption is sluggish. Chinese GDP has shrunk from double digits to around 5% per annum or less.

The IMF calls this particular cocktail of revenue stress and gargantuan debt, the ‘doom loop’. So, will the Chinese economy, second largest in the world at $ 18 trillion, but with very few of the inherent advantages of the $ 25 trillion US economy, spontaneously split wide open?

China is obsessed with checking India in the IOR, and indeed as a rival in the Asia Pacific and on the world stage even though we are presently only at $ 3.5 trillion GDP. The fear is that in five years time, India is likely to be at $ 10 trillion in GDP and it will be too late to check us. But the IOR is much bigger than just India.

 It is an enormously strategic ocean for the world, through which 70% of global oil, 35% of bulk cargo, and 54% of container cargo passes. China receives 80% of its own oil, and 60% of its other goods via the narrow Malacca Straits.

Fortunately therefore, it is not just a matter of China surrounding India with its ‘string of pearls’. India has been countering its encirclement with radar bases of its own in the Seychelles, a more substantial set of facilities in a leased island off Mauritius close to Diego Garcia, access to an Omani base at Duqm, and so on.

France is present in Reunion, Mayotte and Tromelin Island chains.

America has long had a huge base on Diego Garcia with a 12,000 ft. runway for all types of aircraft. It has anchorage facilities for the world’s largest aircraft carriers and associated warships, and at least 250 military aircraft based on the island, including Poseidon surveillance aircraft.

The US maintains two Carrier Battle Groups and three Amphibious Task Forces ( ATFs) involving some 100 warships and over 40,000  naval personnel in the region.

The Chagos Islands have a British presence.

The Australians are also on some of the Cocos Islands.

The Russians, French, British, Indians, Australians, Singaporeans, Japanese, the Vietnamese, now the South Koreans too, the Americans, of course, regularly patrol the IOR.

America also has a base at Singapore for rotational ships and aircraft. China is fearful that the US could effect a naval blockade at the Malacca Straits if its friction with Taiwan occasions it - or for any other reason, such as Chinese militarisation and partial occupation of the South China Sea, a vital international maritime highway.

The CPEC corridor and Chinese built port at Gwadar in Balochistan has not yielded an alternative route as yet, through troubled Pakistan, all the way to Xinkiang.

The IOR comprises one fifth of the water area of the world and is connected to the Pacific Ocean that together girdle the earth. The IOR connects to Africa, West Asia, all the countries of the Asia Pacific.  Irrespective of what President Xi Jinping is telling the CCP at Beijing, China will never be allowed to dominate it.

(1,479 words)

13^th April 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee