Over the past two decades, China’s strategic posture in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has undergone a profound transformation, shifting from a peripheral commercial presence to an increasingly structured geopolitical and military engagement. The IOR is long dominated by extra-regional powers, such as the United States, France, United Kingdom and India, now forms a critical theatre where Beijing’s dual imperatives of energy security and great-power projection converge. China’s growing dependence on the Sea lines of Communication (SLOCs) that pass through the Strait of Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb and the Strait of Malacca has incentivized it to construct a multifaceted presence that combines infrastructure diplomacy, maritime surveillance and demonstrating military capabilities. This fusion of geoeconomic expansion and strategic projection is laying the foundation for an evolving form of Anti-Access and Area Denial (A2/AD) in the Indian Ocean region, one tailored to the region’s unique asymmetries and dispersed geography....