India, China jostle for influence in Indian Ocean
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ
This battered harbor town on Sri
Lanka's southern tip, with its scrawny men selling even scrawnier
fish, seems an unlikely focus for an emerging international
competition over energy supply routes that fuel much of the global
economy.
An impoverished place still recovering from the devastation of the
2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Hambantota has a desolate air, a sense of
nowhereness, punctuated by the realization that looking south over
the expanse of ocean, the next landfall is Antarctica.
But just over the horizon runs one of the world's great trade
arteries, the shipping lanes where thousands of vessels carry oil
from the Middle East and raw materials to Asia, returning with
television sets, toys and sneakers for European consumers.
These tankers provide 80 percent of China's oil and 65 percent of
India's — fuel desperately needed for the two countries' rapidly
growing economies. Japan, too, is almost totally dependent on energy
supplies shipped through the Indian Ocean.
Any disruption — from terrorism, piracy, natural disaster or war —
could have devastating effects on these countries and, in an
increasingly interdependent world, send ripples across the globe.
When an unidentified ship attacked a Japanese oil tanker traveling
through the Indian Ocean from South Korea to Saudi Arabia in April,
the news sent oil prices to record highs.
For decades the world relied on the powerful U.S. Navy to protect
this vital sea lane. But as India and China gain economic heft, they
are moving to expand their control of the waterway, sparking a new —
and potentially dangerous — rivalry between Asia's emerging giants.
China has given massive aid to Indian Ocean nations, signing
friendship pacts, building ports in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well
as Sri Lanka, and reportedly setting up a listening post on one of
Myanmar's islands near the strategic Strait of Malacca.
Now, India is trying to parry China's moves. It beat out China for a
port project in Myanmar. And, flush with cash from its expanding
economy, India is beefing up its military, with the expansion
seemingly aimed at China. Washington and, to a lesser extent, Tokyo
are encouraging India's role as a counterweight to growing Chinese
power.
Among China's latest moves is the billion dollar port its engineers
are building in Sri Lanka, an island country just off India's
southern coast.
The Chinese insist the Hambantota port is a purely commercial move,
and by all appearances, it is. But some in India see ominous designs
behind the project, while others in countries surrounding India like
the idea. A 2004 Pentagon report called Beijing's effort to expand
its presence in the region China's "string of pearls."
No one wants war, and relations between the two nations are now at
their closest since a brief 1962 border war in which China quickly
routed Indian forces. Last year, trade between India and China grew
to $37 billion and their two armies conducted their first-ever joint
military exercise.
Still, the Indians worry about China's growing influence.
"Each pearl in the string is a link in a chain of the Chinese
maritime presence," India's navy chief, Adm. Sureesh Mehta, said in
a speech in January, expressing concern that naval forces operating
out of ports established by the Chinese could "take control over the
world energy jugular."
"It is a pincer movement," said Rahul Bedi, a South Asia analyst
with London-based Jane's Defense Weekly. "That, together with the
slap India got in 1962, keeps them awake at night."
B. Raman, a hawkish, retired Indian intelligence official, expressed
the fears of some Indians over the Chinese-built ports, saying he
believes they'll be used as naval bases to control the area.
"We cannot take them at face value. We cannot assume their
intentions are benign," said Raman.
But Zhao Gancheng, a South Asia expert at the Chinese government-
backed Shanghai Institute for International Studies, says ports like
Hambantota are strictly commercial ventures. And Sri Lanka says the
new port will be a windfall for its impoverished southern region.
With Sri Lanka's proximity to the shipping lane already making it a
hub for transshipping containers between Europe and Asia, the new
port will boost the country's annual cargo handling capacity from 6
million containers to some 23 million, said Priyath Wickrama, deputy
director of the Sri Lankan Ports Authority.
Wickrama said a new facility was needed since the main port in the
capital Colombo has no room to expand and Trincomalee port in the
Northeast is caught in the middle of Sri Lanka's civil war.
Hambantota also will have factories onsite producing cement and
fertilizer for export, he said.
Meanwhile, India is clearly gearing its military expansion toward
China rather than its longtime foe, and India has set up listening
stations in Mozambique and Madagascar, in part to monitor Chinese
movements, Bedi noted. It also has an air base in Kazakhstan and a
space monitoring post in Mongolia — both China's neighbors.
India has announced plans to have a fleet of aircraft carriers and
nuclear submarines at sea in the next decade and recently tested
nuclear-capable missiles that put China's major cities well in
range. It is also reopening air force bases near the Chinese border.
Encouraging India's role as a counter to China, the U.S. has stepped
up exercises with the Indian navy and last year sold it an American
warship for the first time, the 17,000-ton amphibious transport dock
USS Trenton. American defense contractors — shut out from the
lucrative Indian market during the long Cold War — have been
offering India's military everything from advanced fighter jets to
anti-ship missiles.
"It is in our interest to develop this relationship," U.S. Defense
Secretary Robert Gates said during a visit to New Delhi in
February. "Just as it is in the Indians' interest."
Officially, China says it's not worried about India's military
buildup or its closer ties with the U.S. However, foreign analysts
believe China is deeply concerned by the possibility of a U.S.-
Indian military alliance.
Ian Storey of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore
said China sent strong diplomatic messages expressing opposition to
a massive naval exercise India held last year with the U.S., Japan,
Singapore and Australia. And Bedi, the Jane's analyst, added "those
exercises rattled the Chinese."
India's 2007 defense budget was about $21.7 billion, up 7.8 percent
from 2006. China said its 2008 military budget would jump 17.6
percent to some $59 billion, following a similar increase last year.
The U.S. estimates China's actual defense spending may be much
higher.
Like India, China is focusing heavily on its navy, building an
increasingly sophisticated submarine fleet that could eventually be
one of the world's largest.
While analysts believe China's military buildup is mostly focused on
preventing U.S. intervention in any conflict with Taiwan, India is
still likely to persist in efforts to catch up as China expands its
influence in what is essentially India's backyard. Meanwhile, Sri
Lankans — who have looked warily for centuries at vast India to the
north — welcome the Chinese investment in their country.
"Our lives are going to change," said 62-year-old Jayasena
Senanayake, who has seen business grow at his roadside food stall
since construction began on the nearby port. "What China is doing
for us is very good."
Associated Press Writer Christopher Bodeen contributed to this
report from Beijing.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hNkiuHoiDcjL3Aiw7wogBOUTAprwD915B1
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