Diverging Perceptions of China’s Emergence as an Indian Ocean Power

With regard to China’s growing maritime and naval presence in the Indian Ocean, there is an important question to raise: Will China’s leaders be able to understand, to view as legitimate and requiring redress by China, trepidations over the country’s growing military power among its neighbors? Will Beijing be able to recognize and effectively reassure New Delhi that China’s growing military presence in the Indian Ocean does not threaten India?

If China is not able to do this—if it is unable to understand, empathize with (at least to the extent of crediting the validity of Indian concerns), and respond in adequately reassuring ways to its neighbor’s fears—then the probable result will be the formation of a coalition of China’s neighbors seeking collective security against China. Unable to fathom how China’s own growing military power and use of that power might be seen by its neighbors as threatening, the country’s leaders are likely to attribute the formation of a countervailing coalition to the malevolent purposes of other powers—India, Japan, and, of course, the United States. Absolutely convinced of the justness and necessity of its military development, China is unable to understand why its neighbors are not fully persuaded by its repeated declarations of peaceful intent and goodwill. China is convinced, too, that objections to its military rise derive from a desire to keep the country weak and downtrodden, and confronted by the gradual formation of an “anti-China” coalition, Chinese leaders might embrace a forceful move to break out of the looming “encirclement.”

In such a situation India would be especially vulnerable, as it is far weaker than China militarily. India’s primary advantage vis-à-vis the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is the tyranny of distance hobbling China’s capabilities in the Indian Ocean region, but that tyranny of distance is gradually being diminished, if not yet overcome, by China’s assertion of military control in the South China Sea. Beijing sees India as an aspiring regional hegemon working to stifle China’s legitimate presence in the Indian Ocean region. Yet at the same time, in the common Chinese view, India’s ambitions far exceed its capabilities. Additional vulnerability derives from the fact that India is not allied to the United States, while the United States’ traditional China policy is notably predicated on avoiding direct conflict with China—all factors that reduce the risk for China of U.S. intervention in a Sino-Indian conflict. The revival of isolationism by some U.S. presidential candidates makes U.S. belligerency in such a scenario even less likely. Of course, it is these very vulnerabilities that are today nudging India toward closer security ties to the United States and Japan. All this provides further evidence, from Beijing’s point of view, of the hostile intentions of leaders in New Delhi, Tokyo, and Washington. From the standpoint of China’s struggle against U.S., Japanese, and Indian “encirclement,” India might be deemed the weak link in the tightening ring of anti-China encirclement. This essay will assess China’s growing military capabilities and examine the implications for a potential Sino-Indian conflict in the Indian Ocean.

The Chinese Military Threat

China’s material military threat to India may be already greater than has been previously suggested. Although the tyranny of distance favors India and disadvantages the PLA in the Indian Ocean, the thrust of China’s military development over the last twenty years has been to overcome distance and project Chinese military power. A 377-page report by the RAND Corporation in 2015 compared U.S. and Chinese military capabilities in ten areas in the context of a hypothetical high-intensity war over a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.¹ With careful analysis, the report demonstrates that the PLA has developed the ability to launch preemptive first strikes with long-range precision missiles against U.S. bases in Japan (and soon against Guam), knocking out landed airplanes, communications, logistics and support facilities, and runways. The PLA has also deployed via various platforms extremely potent missiles...