China’s maritime ambition is usually measured by the size of its rapidly growing navy. With more than 350 ships, the PLA Navy is the largest navy in the world by numbers, although it still lags behind the US Navy significantly in capability and its ability to project power in its Far seas.
Beijing intends to have a 450-ship navy by 2030 with at least four aircraft carriers, over a dozen nuclear powered attack submarines and more than one third of its surface fleet being blue water capable. It is growing at an astonishing pace and is commissioning vessels every year than the next eight navies combined.
The navy is just one amongst the constituents of a country’s maritime power, even though it is the most important one. In China’s case, its achievements across the other constituents of maritime power are equally impressive. It has the world’s largest Coast Guard; the largest maritime militia comprising armed fishing vessels; the largest merchant fleet; and the largest fishing fleet. It is the world’s largest shipbuilder with over 45 percent of the global share, has seven of the world’s ten busiest ports and has created port facilities all the way to Europe through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
China’s remarkable progress in the maritime domain is underlined by its Civil-Military Fusion strategy (CMF). While there are mixed views about its effectiveness due to China’s internal challenges, there is enough evidence to suggest that a lot of key dual-use disruptive technologies are being developed for use in the military and civil domains. The export of military technology and platforms to most countries in the Indo-Pacific and specifically those in India’s vicinity is central to its military diplomacy strategy.
For China to become the leading global maritime power and fulfil its stated aim of becoming the world’s next superpower, the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is important to China for two main reasons. The first is its Malacca Dilemma. A large portion of China’s trade and energy passes through the IOR. China considers this a major vulnerability, as India with its favourable location in the IOR, virtually straddles the sea lanes and can effectively disrupt China’s economic and energy lifelines. In fact, India can also disrupt the Chinese Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) in other parts as well.
China, therefore has a legitimate right to deploy its navy in the IOR for the protection of its trade, energy and its SLOCs. It has been doing so for anti-piracy missions since 2008. PLA(N) Navy ships and submarines have also been detected and tracked frequently in the IOR. The BRI provides China with the excuse to increase its naval presence in the IOR to protect its own SLOCS and disrupt India’s.
The second reason for expanding Chinese footprint in the IOR is its unfavourable maritime geography, which constrains the PLA Navy’s ability to project power in its far seas and has led largely to its deployments being limited to the First and Second Island Chains. Another inhibiting factor is the considerable distance from the Chinese mainland to the eastern IOR.
For China to establish a favourable maritime position in the IOR, it is essential to contain India’s maritime power. While it continues to develop its impressive force levels, it is also reinforcing its engagement with the region. The recent operationalisation of the Chinese built submarine base in Bangladesh called BNS Shiekh Hasina directly impacts India’s strategic security in the Bay of Bengal. Similarly, facilities in Djibouti, Gwadar and possibly at an Iranian port off the Straits of Hormuz are detrimental to India’s security interests.
China is fully aware of its present limitations and is working to overcome these. It is no coincidence that despite a tense standoff between the two armies along the LAC, the PLA Navy has steered clear of the Indian Navy in the IOR without a single faceoff between the two. However, the PLA Navy will have a formidable IOR presence by 2030.
Although Chinese naval presence in the IOR is limited, its activities are not. Chinese submarines have been frequently tracked in the IOR. Submarines are the most effective intelligence collection, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms because of their inherent qualities of stealth and concealment. The PLAN submarines operate in the IOR to collect and analyse hydrological data, to get a better understanding of the region’s undersea environment. They also gain experience of undertaking long deployments, checking their logistic support facilities and shadowing the Indian Carrier Battle Groups to understand their concept of operations and deployment patterns.
More insidious than the submarines are the frequent forays by Chinese research vessels into the IOR. These vessels stay just outside the EEZ and collect data on the surface and underwater to enhance their maritime as well as undersea domain awareness (UDA). The sea bed mapping and profiling of the ocean which they do as part of their civilian research also assists submarine operations. They also collect valuable telemetry data of rocket and missile launches carried out by India, both from ships and ashore. They are also equipped with undersea gliders which are deployed to collect underwater data in specific areas that can be used to support future submarine and anti-submarine operations.
It is imperative for India to remain the predominant naval power in the Indian Ocean to protect its own maritime interests, and its trade and energy security. It therefore needs to augment both, its capacity and capability through larger force levels aviation assets; it has to enhance its Maritime Domain Awareness through multi-domain surveillance including space and cyber, a networked seabed surveillance capability as an extension of the Fish Hook system from Sumatra to the Great Nicobar Islands and force multipliers like drones and other unmanned and autonomous air, surface and underwater platforms.
In an informationized and interconnected world, subsea cables are an asset and a vulnerability. India sits at the hub of this network in the IOR and besides being a preferred regional security provider, is also considered a preferred connectivity partner. Securing these will be a major challenge that regional and global navies including the India Navy, will have to contend with.
These remarks were presented by Cmde. Anil Jai Singh at Global Conference for New Sinology (GCNS), 2023
Commodore Anil Jai Singh is a veteran maritime strategist and submarine technology expert with 30 years of experience as a submariner in the Indian Navy and 11 years of senior leadership with a leading global undersea technology giant. He is the Vice President of the Indian Maritime Foundation and heads its Delhi branch. He was commissioned in the Navy in Jan 1981 and took premature retirement in March 2011. In his career spanning three decades, he had the distinction of commanding four submarines and a Fleet ship. He also served in the Directorates of Naval Plans and Submarine Acquisition at Naval Headquarters and was involved in drafting the Navy’s 30 year submarine construction plan and the 15 year ship building plan which are now coming to fruition. He has been a Directing Staff at the College of Naval Warfare, Senior Instructor(Navy) at the National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla and the Defence and Naval Adviser at the Indian High Commission in London. His last appointment was as Deputy Assistant Chief (Maritime) in the Perspective Planning and Force Development branch of the Integrated Defence Staff in the MoD. He speaks and writes on maritime matters and defence procurement planning issues at various fora in India and abroad. He has been a member of various Track1.5 initiatives related to regional security forums.
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