Chinese development in Indian Ocean raising concern of possible militarisation among major players
By South Asia correspondent James Bennett
Updated 9 Feb 2017, 9:25pm
Photo: China's Liaoning aircraft carrier with accompanying fleet in the South China Sea. (Reuters)
Japan, India, Australia and the United States are closely monitoring China's infrastructure development on the Indian Ocean rim amid increasing concern about the potential for militarisation in the sea lanes which carry much of the world's oil.
One former American intelligence chief is warning the only way to avoid that is to make confrontation unpalatable for China.
With an eye to China's current island reclamation activity in the South China Sea, Japan, which is almost wholly dependent on imported oil, is particularly nervous.
"Yes, China is a kind of threat to us in the South China Sea. Will this Indian Ocean be the same, or different?" asked Nobuo Tanaka, a former Japanese bureaucrat and head of the International Energy Agency.
See how China is converting reefs to military facilities by building artificial islands in the South China Sea.
More than 80 per cent of the world's seaborne oil trade passes through three Indian Ocean choke points — the Strait of Hormuz, Strait of Malacca and Bab el-Mandab.
"This area, the Indian Ocean, is so important for us now because it connects our energy sources in the Middle East to Asia and to Japan," Mr Tanaka said at an Indian Ocean security conference in New Delhi this week.
The chair of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation think tank said Japan was worried about a Chinese road, rail and pipeline project from China through central Asia and Pakistan, which culminates at a deep-water port close to Karachi, strategically located near the entrance to the Persian gulf.
"China is trying to develop so-called 'one belt, one road' strategy and they're extending their power projecting their power to this area also," he said.
Shared concern
"The fear is this could become increasingly militarised," said Dhruva Jaishankar, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institute in India.
"The Indian Ocean is already seeing a level of competition that I think we would not have anticipated 10 years ago, we've seen investments by China, Japan, the United States, Singapore, India all across the Indian ocean littoral from Iran to Djibouti, east Africa to South-East Asia.
"I think the Indian Ocean will become a principal focus of security competition in the coming decade or two."
READ MORE: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-09/could-the-indian-ocean-become-south-china-sea/8257204
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