CHINA’S INDIAN OCEAN AMBITIONS: INVESTMENT, INFLUENCE, AND MILITARY ADVANTAGE JOSHUA T. WHITE JUNE 2020 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY China is developing a range of dual-use capabilities that could prove valuable for higher-end missions in a China has significantly expanded its engagements in conflict environment, policymakers should take care the Indian Ocean region over the past three decades, not to assume that, in the Indian Ocean context, China raising fears among American and Indian strategists can easily leverage “debt-trap diplomacy” investments that its growing naval presence, together with its use in ports and other infrastructure for meaningful military of so-called “debt-trap diplomacy,” might provide it with advantage. The kinds of capabilities that the Chinese meaningful military advantages far from its shores. military would want to leverage in a conflict would go beyond what might be available from a commercial Although China’s ultimate aims in the Indian Ocean venture or intermittent ship visits. Indeed, access remain somewhat ambiguous, it is clear that the arrangements that are grounded in economic coercion Chinese leadership is actively pursuing capabilities are unlikely to be politically stable or strategically reliable. that would allow it to undertake a range of military missions in the region. This paper explores five such Second, this paper argues that notwithstanding mission objectives — ranging from relatively “benign” some skepticism about the military utility of China’s activities to those that would be more alarming to U.S. commercial activities in the region to date, there are and Indian policy planners — and describes the kinds indeed investments that could foreshadow China’s of defense and economic investments that China intention and capability to be able to operate high-end would require to carry them out. These objectives military missions of the kind that would be perceived as are: 1) conduct non-combat activities focused on threatening to U.S. and Indian interests. Policymakers protecting Chinese citizens and investments, and should watch carefully for leading indicators that could bolstering China’s soft power influence; 2) undertake presage Chinese efforts to undertake such missions. counterterrorism activities, unilaterally or with partners, These include certain kinds of naval deployments that against organizations that threaten China; 3) collect clearly overmatch the requirements of counterpiracy intelligence in support of operational requirements, or humanitarian activities; new platforms for and against key adversaries; 4) support efforts aimed maritime-based intelligence collection against state at coercive diplomacy toward small countries in the adversaries; and efforts to bolster the resilience of region; and 5) enable effective operations in a conflict logistics networks that would be critical to sustaining environment, namely the ability to deter, mitigate, operations in a conflict environment. or terminate a state-sponsored interdiction of trade bound for China, and to meaningfully hold at risk U.S. or Indian assets in the event of a wider conflict. INTRODUCTION China’s growing economic and military reach into the This paper argues, first, that while the United States, Indian Ocean has precipitated considerable anxiety, India, and their partners are right to be concerned that both in the region and globally. This anxiety takes REGIONAL INFLUENCE AND STRATEGY 1 GLOBAL CHINA CHINA’S INDIAN OCEAN AMBITIONS: INVESTMENT, INFLUENCE, AND MILITARY ADVANTAGE several forms. Indian observers have nervously eyed might be able to convert its broad range of regional China’s increasingly sophisticated military capabilities activities into meaningful military advantages. and noted its gradually expanding mission sets that extend beyond the waters of the western Pacific.1 The core question is this: What economic or defense American strategists, increasingly focused on a multi- investments in the IOR might China be able to leverage front competition with a rising China, have taken to to take on more sophisticated military missions in the warning the world about China’s so-called “debt-trap region, particularly ones that the United States and diplomacy,” for which South Asian cases such as Sri its partners might perceive as threatening? In other Lanka’s Hambantota Port are presented as troubling words, what kinds of Chinese activity in the Indian exemplars. And small countries within the region, Ocean might reasonably prefigure an evolution from while seeking to leverage Sino-Indian competition relatively “benign” military missions to those that are to their advantage, have quietly expressed concerns more advanced and possibly more alarming to U.S. about whether they can navigate China’s political policy planners? influence while retaining their freedom of maneuver. The paper begins with a review of the ways in which the The degradation of the U.S.-China relationship under Chinese government has justified and carried out its U.S. President Donald Trump has only further fueled activities in the IOR, with a particular focus on military concern that the Indian Ocean will emerge as a engagements and capabilities, as well as economic theater for destabilizing proxy competition between investments which may be dual-use or provide Washington and Beijing. strategic advantages. The heart of the paper then These concerns are entirely reasonable. And yet briefly considers five “meta-mission objectives” that most are derived not from present-day assessments the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might in principle of China’s influence, access, or capabilities in the pursue, and to varying degrees is already pursuing, region — all of which remain modest — but from future roughly ordered from those that are the most notionally projections of its role in the wider Indian Ocean region non-threatening to those that are the most ambitious (IOR).2 Forecasting the trajectory of China’s influence and potentially troubling to the United States, and to its 3 in the IOR is no easy task, now made all the more close partners in the region such as India. complicated by the as-yet-unknown implications of These five meta-mission objectives, described in the COVID-19 pandemic for geopolitical competition greater detail below, are: 1) conduct non-combat in general, and China’s global investment strategy in activities focused on protecting Chinese citizens particular. Any forecast of the future environment in and investments, and bolstering China’s soft power the IOR quickly prompts a set of exceedingly complex influence; 2) undertake counterterrorism activities, questions about Chinese intent, unity of effort, and unilaterally or with partners, against organizations causality: What precisely is China seeking to achieve in that threaten China; 3) collect intelligence in support the region? Does it have a coherent, bureaucratically of operational requirements, and against key synchronized, all-encompassing strategy to secure adversaries; 4) support efforts aimed at coercive military and strategic advantages across Asia, or diplomacy toward small countries in the region; and 5) are its military efforts incremental responses to new enable effective operations in a conflict environment, exigencies, such as noncombatant evacuation, which namely the ability to deter, mitigate, or terminate a arise from China’s economic expansion? Are China’s state-sponsored interdiction of trade bound for China, economic activities the vanguard of its military and to meaningfully hold at risk U.S. or Indian assets ambitions, or vice-versa? Or both? in the event of a wider conflict. This paper does not pretend to divine China’s grand These mission sets would not necessarily be pursued strategic ambitions in the IOR — a task which would sequentially; and certain skills, capabilities, and presumably involve deciphering opaque Chinese platforms that the PLA might establish in the IOR strategy documents and extrapolating from China’s would naturally be transferable between and among fragmentary engagements in the region. Instead, it missions.4 will consider practically and prospectively how China REGIONAL INFLUENCE AND STRATEGY 2 GLOBAL CHINA CHINA’S INDIAN OCEAN AMBITIONS: INVESTMENT, INFLUENCE, AND MILITARY ADVANTAGE For each of these five meta-mission objectives, this until that time naturally focused on coastal and near paper will consider two questions: i) what capabilities sea operations, was directed to undertake a series of and resources would China require to carry out this port calls on Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.6 It set of objectives? and ii) to what extent do Chinese became apparent shortly thereafter during the 1991 defense and economic investments in the IOR to date crisis in Somalia that the PLAN was ill-equipped to carry suggest that China is pursuing these objectives, and out even non-combat operations far from its shores; the what would it look like if they did? Chinese government had to arrange for a state-owned commercial vessel to evacuate Chinese citizens.7 The paper will conclude with a wider look at how China Notwithstanding this limitation, China’s first defense might realistically convert its investment, influence, white paper, released in 1998, reflected limited naval and presence into military capabilities that could ambitions and took pains to note that China “does threaten U.S. security interests directly, or could do so not station any troops or set up any military bases in indirectly by degrading India’s relative advantages