China unruffled by exercises in Indian Ocean
India and Australia will hold their first ever joint naval drills in September to reportedly counter China's growing influence in the Indian Ocean.
The maritime exercises, to be held in the Bay of Bengal off India's eastern coast next month, will include anti-submarine warfare and coordinated anti-submarine drills, the Australian High Commission in Delhi said in a statement.
While the navies did not specify the goal of the drills, Western media has described it as a joint effort to contain China's maritime activity in the Indian Ocean, citing a Chinese submarine visit to Sri Lanka's commercial port in Colombo in 2014.
However, Chinese experts believed that if the reason was as reported, India has overacted. China's presence, they said, has been in keeping with normal maritime activity.
"India overlooked the fact that China's interests in the Indian Ocean are mostly economic, but not necessarily military," Jiang Jingkui, director of the Department of South Asian Languages at Peking University told the Global Times.
Some 40 percent of China's cargo, 30 percent of imported natural gas and 82 percent of imported oil are transported via the Indian Ocean, news site takungpao.com reported in June.
Geng Yansheng, former spokesman for China's Ministry of National Defense, explained in September that the navy submarine in question docked for refueling and crew refreshment during its escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and off Somalia.
Analysts view the drills as a further step toward forging a long-planned alliance with the U.S., Japan and Australia to contain China.
"The U.S., Australia and Japan have long attempted to forge an informal alliance with India to contain China in the Asia-Pacific, but India appeared to have not responded enthusiastically given its economic cooperation with China," Jiang said.
David Brewster, a security expert at Australian National University, said the Chinese submarine activity had served as a "wake-up call" that India need to work more closely with other navies.
An Indian Navy spokesman said four of its ships, as well as a Boeing P-8 Poseidon spy plane, would take part in the week-long drills that start on September 12.
India is also set to take part in joint naval exercises with Japan and the US in October, the first such event in eight years.
Australia said it would send a frigate, tanker, submarine and a Lockheed AP-3C maritime surveillance aircraft to join the Indian navy for the planned bilateral exercises.
"It is unnecessary for China to worry about the drills since Japan, India and the U.S. also held naval drills in 2014 [in the Western Pacific]," Wang Dehua, a research fellow at the Shanghai Municipal Center for International Studies told the Global Times.
Separately, the U.S. plans to increase the number of military and humanitarian drills it conducts in the Asia-Pacific as part of a new strategy to counter China's rapid expansion in the South China Sea. They will focus on the protection of "freedom of seas," deterring conflict and coercion, and promote adherence to international law, Colonel Restituto Padilla, the Philippines' military spokesman said on Wednesday.
