India and France on Saturday signed a military cooperation in the Indian Ocean accord that has China’s mighty strategic shadow.
As per the deal signed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Emmanuel Macron, both countries will open its naval bases to warships from the other.
China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea already worry world powers. And the country’s step to invade the vast Indian Ocean— stretching from the Suez Canal to the Malacca Strait — has heightened that concern.
Since China had also extended its military presence by opening a naval base in the eastern African nation of Djibouti last year, Modi and Macron are anxious about it.
The country is also building up its trading network called One Belt One Road initiative, which involves many of the Asian and African nations that line the Indian Ocean.
Beijing also constructed a port in Pakistan’s Gwadar and taken a 99-year-lease on Sri Lanka’s Hambantota. In addition, it has also bought a number of tiny islands in the Maldives.
All of this has alarmed India, which sits at the heart of the Indian Ocean region. Experts in
New Delhi view that the Chinese companies investing in assets ranging from airports to the Bangladesh stock exchange as Beijing’s trojan horses.
“They essentially work at the behest of the state and all of their investments are actually not commercial investments but strategic investments and they are meant to serve a geopolitical purpose,” said Abhijit Singh, an analyst at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank.
PM Modi had already said in 2014 that boosting India’s influence in its immediate neighbourhood was a strategic priority.
Modi government expressed fury when Sri Lanka let a Chinese submarine make a stopover in 2014. Colombo refused a similar request the following year.
India too beefed up its patrols in the Sunda Strait in the eastern Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. It also boosted its maritime surveillance capability around the Andaman and Nicobar islands off Myanmar, where Chinese warships and submarines have increasingly been on patrol.
Reunion island is in turn a key French territory in the Indian Ocean and Paris also has extensive Pacific interests.
“We have a strong maritime power, a big navy with our nuclear submarines,” Macron said in a TV interview on Friday.
France is “very active in this region to preserve collective security and for me, India is one of the critical partners to preserve stability in the whole region.”
China strongly denies any territorial motive against India despite its huge investments and military moves. “The two countries are partners in development, not rivals,” said the foreign ministry in Beijing.