Asian Giants’ Game of Chess in Indian Ocean

ABOARD THE LINER QUEEN ELIZABETH 2 OFF SOUTHWEST INDIA: A seagull soars above the ship's bows. Passengers cavort in the swimming pool. Nearby, a blonde in a black bikini soaks up the tropical sunshine and sips a gin and tonic. The scene could not be more tranquil.

But on the distant horizon, a couple of supertankers push eastwards through the heat haze in the general direction of the Malacca Strait. They remind us that leisurely cruises are among the less important traffic on what admirals like to call SLOCs - sea lanes of commerce.

My fellow passengers and I have also witnessed recent signs that, as the rise of India and China continues, the Indian Ocean will soon match the Pacific in geostrategic importance. In Kochi, our cruise liner passed an impressive grey flotilla of destroyers and frigates at the Indian navy's southern command base.

In Mumbai, we moored near one of India's two operational aircraft carriers (a third is on the way) - reminders of the country's growing focus on security in the ocean that carries its name.

And no patch of this ocean's 73.5 million sq km of water will be more important than the SLOC we are passing through. More than 50 oil tankers navigate these latitudes daily; by 2020, up to 200 are expected daily, carrying some 80 per cent of the Asia-Pacific's energy consumption from the Middle East.

Ahead of this, China and India are scrambling for advantage around the ocean's rim. On this lazy morning on board, to our north-east, China is building military and perhaps naval links with Bangladesh and Myanmar. To our south-west, the first results of last year's China-Africa summit in Beijing are beginning to appear.

In March, 10 members of China's Communist Youth League arrived in the Seychelles, the first of a group of more than 300 youth volunteers - a Chinese version of the US Peace Corps - to be sent to Africa over the next three years. Plans exist to train 15,000 African professionals in China over the next decade.

According to New Delhi press reports, both India and the United States are studying intensely this rise in Chinese activity. Following the first Indo- US defence joint working group meeting in New Delhi last month, The Times of India quoted an Indian defence official's concern about China's 'growing naval expansion in the Indian Ocean'. He said: 'China is rapidly increasing military and maritime links with countries such as Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar.'

But New Delhi has not been idle either. In February 2005, its naval chief, Admiral Arun Prakash, pre-empted the Chinese navy's possible involvement in the affairs of the Seychelles by presenting the small but strategically placed republic's coast guard with the Indian navy's newest fast-attack vessel. The move came when it seemed China was about to make a similar gift.

India's first-ever defence cooperation agreement with a major African nation followed: India last year agreed to mount periodic maritime patrols of the Mozambique coast and to supply armaments and defence services, including military infrastructure. India is also building a high-tech monitoring station in north Madagascar.

Nearby, Mauritius and India have been discussing India's possible long- term lease of the Agalgela Islands for 'infrastructure and tourism development'. Military analysts quickly noted the significance: The 70 sq km area is 3,100km south-west of the Kochi naval base and about 1,800km off Diego Garcia, the region's massive US military and naval installations.

Meantime, two recent developments have alerted the world to China's growing military-naval competence. On Jan 10, China became the third country, after the United States and Russia, to have successfully carried out an anti-satellite operation: A so-called 'kinetic kill vehicle' launched from a missile destroyed an ageing low-earth orbiting weather satellite. Though this test shot was not, as some alarmists claimed, the beginnings of a space-arms race, it did show China's intention to develop a weapon that at some time could strike at US dependence on satellite-based reconnaissance, navigation and targeting.

The second event has been much quieter but more protracted: Beijing's steady construction of its 'string of pearls' strategy, the geostrategists' new buzz-phrase for Chinese efforts to increase access to global ports and airfields and develop special diplomatic relationships from the South China Sea to the Arabian Gulf.

The most recent and likely most significant 'pearl' emerged earlier this year as state-owned China Harbour Engineering Company helped Pakistan complete Phase II of the mammoth deep sea port at Gwadar, near the Strait of Hormuz' access to Iranian oil. The port was formally inaugurated by Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf in March.

(Singapore's PSA International, which last year won a bid to operate the port, reportedly plans to invest up to US$8 billion (S$12 billion) in Gwadar over the next 40 years.)

It would be easy to misinterpret all this activity. An attendee at a shipboard lecture that I presented asked: 'Why shouldn't China and India take precautions? Anglo-Saxon navies have given themselves a free hand in the Indian Ocean for two centuries. Wouldn't Chinese and Indian admirals be neglecting their duties if they failed to arrange security for their countries' supply routes?'

The point was well worth making. Although naval arms competitions can quickly accelerate - think of ill-fated Anglo-German and US-Japan rivalries early last century - diplomats, admirals and generals are expected to engage in move and counter-move. For them, oceanic chess is a CV entry.

At this point, it seems appropriate to keep a sceptical eye on the actions and their energy levels. And perhaps a cautious ear open to the rhetoric?