Opinion Arabian Sea: Bases for Beijing

“This is entirely a matter for the country’s foreign policy circles,but I feel that would be appropriate if we could have a relatively stable,fixed base for supplies and maintenance,” said Admiral Yin Zhou,who is director of an advisory committee for the Chinese navy’s drive to upgrade information technology.

Pointing out that other great powers like the US,France,Britain and Russia have military presence in the region,Admiral Yin argued that the countries of the Gulf would fully understand Chinese reasons when it decided to establish a naval base.

Since the beginning of 2009,China has sustained a continuous presence in the Gulf of Aden aimed at countering the rampant threat of piracy. In deciding to join the other navies already operating in the Gulf of Aden,China had broken a long-standing taboo in its national security policy — of deploying its military forces for operations other than national territorial defence.

In launching a public debate on acquiring bases in the Indian Ocean,Beijing is merely following the logic of its naval deployment to the Gulf of Aden. All navies that operate far from their shores need to be resupplied either by their own ships or facilities for replenishment at fixed bases in the operational area.

The suggestion on bases from Beijing could not have come as a surprise for New Delhi. India had been closely monitoring the rising Chinese naval profile in the Indian Ocean during the last few years. Beijing’s effort to put together a ‘string of pearls’ — building ports at Gwadar in Pakistan,Hambantota in Sri Lanka,and Sittwe in Myanmar — had woken New Delhi up to focus on China’s new maritime strategy.

What’s new from Beijing this week is the fact that China has begun to talk explicitly about an exclusively ‘military’ facility as opposed to the commercial maritime infrastructure it was building at various places in the Indian Ocean.

Interestingly,Beijing’s denials that followed the Admiral’s statement were not definitive. The message is that while there is no change in the current policy of seeking military bases around the world,the issues are under debate.

India will be deluding itself if it merely repeats the old Third World rhetoric against foreign military bases or objects to the Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean. Instead,India should stop being coy about acquiring its own foreign bases and start finding ways to deal with the inevitable permanent Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean.

(C. Raja Mohan is Henry A Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress,Washington DC)