The vulnerabilities of Malacca Straits are even greater – besides the inordinately dense mercantile traffic, the 800 km long waterway poses many navigational constraints. It is only 1.2 nm wide at its narrowest and 22 m deep at its shallowest. Intense fishing activity, shipwrecks and shoals pose additional pilotage problems, now further aggravated by the December 2004 Tsunami that has reconfigured the underwater topography. Alternative straits are available for shipping, but this would increase the sailing distance by at least 850nm. Besides, these routes are relatively poorly charted and lack good navigational aids/infrastructure.
The strategies of China and India are essentially centred on “˜avoidance ““ these incorporate either the “˜eggs-in-the-basket approach (resource and source diversification) or, in case of China, the “™shunt approach (to bypass insecure sea-lines).
The major threat to shipping in the Malacca Straits is piracy. Until a few years back, the boarding of ships for petty theft was more common. The attacks have now become more violent and well orchestrated. The Aceh rebels have often resorted to piracy, attacking ships carrying oil and other natural resources since they perceive that they have been unfairly denied access to the natural resource wealth of their province. The funds generated are used to finance their operations. The Sri Lankan separatist group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) has also hijacked ships in the past for direct material gain or to disrupt energy supplies bound for the government forces.
The offshoot of Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia, Jammah Islamiyah, actively supports the sub-regional insurgencies in Muslim-dominated areas. It is now being feared that the JI operatives could also use the tactics of the pirates or even employ them to scuttle a hijacked ship in the most constricted portion of the Malacca Straits or to pilot a vessel carrying dangerous cargo into hub-port. Either one of these would have a severe impact on global economy. This would have cascading and chaotic effects – while time-sensitive freight11 would be hit directly, it would also lead to immediate rise of insurance and freight rates, especially for energy shipments, including dry bulk such as coal. Again, China and India would be among the worst hit in terms of the accelerated process of economic development that the two countries are currently undergoing.
Human activity does not imperil shipping alone -the recent Tsunami of 26 December 2004 may have been unprecedented, but cyclones in the Bay of Bengal are as frequent as two to four annually, which cause much devastation at sea and in the littoral. Considering that more than 100 tankers transit the NSR each day, any maritime disaster could easily lead to an oil spill and seriously degrade the environment.
Current Energy Strategies
The ‘lifeblood’ of countries includes trade in all merchandise. However, energy inflows would be of greater urgency to any energy-deficient country due to the grossly uneven global distribution of fossil-fuel reserves. In that direction, both China and India have worked out respective strategies.
China’s Strategy
China is at a relative advantage in terms of sea-borne trade since three-quarters of its trade flows are not geographically constrained by the choke points of Southeast Asia. It is aptly using this advantage in terms of its energy security too, seeking to source much of its LNG imports from Southeast Asia, Australia and Russia (Sakhalin).
It (China) is implementing its “string of pearls strategy” that seeks strategic presence in states that lie along the route ““ Pakistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia.
In the future, some of its oil could also come from Latin America (Venezuela) through the Pacific route. However, China’s dependence on West Asia would continue to be a cause for concern. Besides being insecure due to Islamic extremism, the sub-region is also under an overbearing influence of the USA. China is thus on the lookout for oil in Africa and Central Asia too.
Notwithstanding the diversification of sources, most of China’s energy would continue to flow through the NSR, with the attendant insecurities of being located at end of this principal energy route. In order to secure these ‘lifelines’, it is implementing its “string of pearls strategy” that seeks strategic presence in states that lie along the route – Pakistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia.12
Increasing the ‘reach’ of the Chinese navy and conduct of joint naval exercises with foreign navies have also been realized as an attendant imperatives. In order to obviate the insecurities connected with the Malacca Straits, it is considering alternative routes, including pipelines from Sittwe in Myanmar to Yunnan in China and another pipeline/canal across Isthmus of Kra (southern Thailand) to the Gulf of Thailand. These ’shunts’ would also cut down many miles of shipping distance.
India’s Strategy
Although India is geo-strategically located with respect to the Indian Ocean sea-lines, relative to China, it is at a greater disadvantage in terms of source-diversification options since it is straddled between the two choke points.
India’s is on the path of optimum resource-diversification and is also making efforts to expand domestic exploration/production. Besides, its source-diversification strategy is very similar to that of China’s – the first is to reduce dependence on oil imports from West Asia, for which, it is seeking alternatives in Africa and South America. The second is to diversify its LNG imports to the east such as from Indonesia, Russia (Sakhalin), Myanmar and Vietnam. In this case LNG shipping would have to pass through the straits of Southeast Asia.
The above strategies of China and India are essentially centred on ‘avoidance’ – these incorporate either the ‘eggs-in-the-basket’ approach (resource and source diversification) or, in case of China, the ’shunt’ approach (to bypass insecure sea-lines). However, in order to address the energy transit problem comprehensively for the long-term, the two countries would need to examine the feasibility of cooperative sea-line security mechanisms.
A Convergence?
It is obvious that despite the adoption of ‘cooperative mode’ during Premier Wen Jiabaos’s 2003 visit to India in terms of the possibility of joint bidding and the Asian Energy Market in the future, the rivalry between China and India in bidding for stakes in overseas oil and gas-fields has been manifesting itself time-and-again – Sudan, Russia, Angola, Iran and Kazakhstan.13 The intense rivalry could be attributed to the zero-sum nature of such bids, particularly when the hunger for energy resources back home is intensifying by the day.
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