Chinese checkers in the Indian Ocean region

There is a curious dance that increasingly happens in some countries of the subcontinent whenever a new government takes over. Where will this new head of government head to first? India or China? If it is one, then a visit to the other usually follows after a brief interval. Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal, occasionally Bhutan, and, in the Hasina construct, Bangladesh. Regional-policy wonks have been known to place friendly wagers over it.

There are exceptions, of course, somewhat pro-China. Pakistan has for long been off the India list. Bangladesh and India’s post-Hasina meltdown has precluded the visit of the head of Bangladesh’s interim government who, donning the robes of a transformational leader, is off to Davos for the annual World Economic Forum jamboree (while his foreign ministry colleague is headed to Beijing to lay the groundwork for a state visit).

The game of Chinese checkers in the Indian Ocean region in general, and the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, continues with the visit to Beijing in mid-January by Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

Sri Lanka’s tearaway left-leaning president ended decades of rule by Colombo elites in September 2024. In November, the National People’s Power, a coalition he heads, won parliamentary elections. Weeks later, in mid-December, AKD, as he is commonly referred to, headed to India on a state visit, his first such overseas. Bilateral bonhomie followed. Gratitude for India’s concessional financial aid during Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, besides supplying fuel, fertiliser, and medical supplies; a declaration that the strategically located country would not be used for activities inimical to India; and possibilities of an imminent deal for defence cooperation.

Among several other initiatives and undertakings, it capped a deal for a fuel farm near Trincomalee harbour to the east of the island, and an India-funded power plant. India’s go-to conglomerate, the Adani Group, is also engaged in a massive terminal project near Colombo.

This was seen as somewhat of an Indian comeback after nearly two decades of China’s steadily ramped-up play in Sri Lanka, from massive infrastructure projects to ports and an airport, and owning a substantial chunk of Sri Lankan debt. Debt is of course a strategic handle, which led to Chinese grumbling when Sri Lanka reached out to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout at the peak of her balance of payments crisis. Sri Lanka secured a $3 billion International Monetary Fund loan in March 2023.

India’s concern had particularly deepened after Chinese funds developed the Hambantota port to the country’s deep south. It sits close to major international shipping lanes, China’s main fuel-supply routes from West Asia and is a node for strategic sea routes all along the Indian Ocean Rim; and was seen as a pearl in China’s so-called string of pearls deployment in the Indian Ocean Region. There are a couple of emergent pearls in the Bay of Bengal area (more on this a little later) and, in the Arabian Sea, the southwestern Pakistani port of Gwadar is effectively a Chinese redoubt, both as a naval “pearl” as much as a terminus for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor that traverses the entire length of Pakistan. The Iranian port of Chabahar, lies not far across the border from Gwadar. Last May, Iran and India signed a 10-year contract to operate Chabahar port, like Gwadar built with a large harbour as a pivot.

Sri Lanka is brilliantly placed – in trade, transit, and strategic terms – with the Bay of Bengal to its northeast, the Arabian Sea to its northwest, and the vastness of the Indian Ocean to the south; and, also, as a convenient hop to that other huge strategic archipelago-nation, the Maldives, and the Chagos archipelago to its south, which has Diego Garcia, a joint military base of the United Kingdom and United States.

Hambantota port was eventually given over to Chinese control with a 99-year lease in 2017. Since, Chinese vessels have regularly visited Hambantota, including surveillance vessels and ships geared to scientific research – an established euphemism quite like cultural attaché or consular staff – for docking and replenishment. India, which is directly threatened by this strategic Chinese presence so close to its shores and what it considers to be its zone of maritime influence, has pushed back with varying degrees of success. A small win came in 2023, when an India and Russian consortium – the Indian firm is in aerospace and defence – won a bid to run Hambantota’s airport for 30 years; the airport, which had proved to be a commercial dud financed with Chinese loans, is due north of the port.

As a country in flux in a region in flux, a Lankan twitch towards India or China sets the other regional heavy to a hyper-active scramble. Whatever the statements of friendship during Dissanayake’s visit to India, the statements of friendship during his visit to Beijing last week peaked with a Chinese proposal for a $3.7bn oil refinery at Hambantota.

This would significantly up the stakes: China would push hard to secure this project, which would dovetail quite brilliantly into its port venture, a win-win for China’s regional interests while making India greatly insecure to have such a hub so close to home – a strategic double-whammy, as it were. Such stakes explain why India went into such a tizzy, for instance, when a publicly avowed pro-China and anti-India president took office in the Maldives in 2023, and his party subsequently won parliamentary elections in a landslide. Financial difficulty for the Maldives has since compelled an outreach to India and the tables appear to have turned – until the next exigency.

Related action has ratcheted up in the adjacent Bay of Bengal area. India has undertaken a massive overhaul of its Andaman and Nicobar Island chain that sits a short distance from the Strait of Malacca, a key channel for Southeast Asia and East Asia, and through which about two-thirds of China’s maritime trade passes. There is a major transhipment hub planned in the islands. And India has for several years maintained a “tri-command” base there, integrating the army, air force, and the navy with planned upgrades of berthing facilities and reconnaissance capabilities. India’s frontline Sukhoi Su-30 MKI fighters have also conducted missile tests from the islands.

This hub is also appreciably close to purported Chinese operations on islands of nearby Myanmar, and not far – either from eastern arc of India or the Andaman Islands – from China’s oil and gas hubs along the coast in Rakhine province, from where two pipelines carry fuel across Myanmar to southwest China.

As with developments in Myanmar, India and its “Quad” partners, the US, Australia, and Japan, have also kept eagle-eyes, so to say, on naval development and deployment in Bangladesh, especially the large new submarine-and-warship base in Pekua, north of the coastal resort town of Cox’s Bazar, and just north of the work-in-progress port and energy hub at Matarbari. Constructed with Chinese funds and expertise, it is now referred to as BNS Pekua, less dressy than its name of BNS Sheikh Hasina when it was inaugurated by the now-deposed premier of Bangladesh in early 2023. The Quad also keeps a close watch on Bangladesh’s coast and draught – draft – in various channels and ports.

Oceanic chess – or checkers – will only get more intense as the stakes keep increasing.

Sudeep Chakravarti works in the policy-and-practice space in Eastern South Asia, greater South Asia, and the Indian Ocean Region.

This article was first published in Dhaka Tribune.