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.
The concept of Anti-Access and Area Denial (A2/AD) refers to a military strategy aimed at preventing or restricting an adversary’s ability to enter and operate within a specific region of strategic importance. It is composed of two complementary elements: Anti-Access, which focuses on the ability to prevent an opposing force from entering an area of operations and Area Denial, which limits their freedom of movement once inside, using submarines, mines and air defenses.
Originally formulated within U.S. defense strategy in the 1990s to describe how potential adversaries could counter American Power projection, the concept was popularized by strategist Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Over time, China adopted and adapted A2/AD principles under its own Doctrine of Active Defense, emphasizing a posture of strategic defense combined with operational defense. Within this framework, China uses A2/AD not merely to keep adversaries out, but to deter, delay, and control the tempo of escalation, especially against superior naval powers like the United States.
In the Indian Ocean Region, China’s growing maritime footprint through bases like Djibouti and strategic points like Gwadar and Hambantota, along with its maritime surveillance networks, suggests an evolving form of “distributed denial” that extends its strategic outreach. Here, A2/AD integrates with Beijing’s broader geoeconomic ambitions under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), allowing China to secure Chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb, while projecting itself as a resident power.
Maritime Silk Road as a Strategic enabler
The Geoeconomic dimension of this evolution is critical. China’s Maritime Silk Road (MSR) under the broader Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), provides the physical and financial scaffolding for its maritime reach. By financing and constructing ports, industrial parks and special economic zones, China has embedded itself deeply in the economic systems of IOR states. Yet, these assets also have a latent military utility: deep-water ports capable of hosting large vessels, satellite communication links facilitating naval coordination, and undersea cables supporting secure information networks. This fusion of Civilian and Military capabilities, is the hallmark of China’s Military-Civil Fusion Strategy, represents a distinct geoeconomic pathway toward A2/AD.
Rather than relying on direct confrontation, Beijing’s approach privileges denial through connectivity, establishing economic dispensability that can be leveraged for strategic denial if regional conflict escalates. At the geopolitical level, this strategy has profound implications. If China were to contest the position of “resident power” in the IOR, it would mark a significant reordering of regional hierarchies.
Traditionally, India has viewed itself as the primary stakeholder in the region’s security architecture, given its geographic centrality and historical maritime dominance. However, China’s economic might and expanding naval presence are gradually diluting this advantage. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) now conducts regular deployments in the IOR, maintains a permanent base in Djibouti, and operates a growing number of survey and research vessels, such as Yuan Wang and Xiang Yang Hong classes, that doubles as intelligence gathering platforms. This sustained presence enables Beijing to build a form of Situational Denial, ensuring persistent surveillance and reducing adversaries ability to operate unmonitored.
Exploiting Asymmetry: Economic Dependence as Strategic Leverage
The asymmetry in military and technological capabilities between China and most IOR littoral states further amplifies its strategic leverage. While India, the United States, and to a lesser degree France and the United Kingdom possess military capabilities in the region, smaller states such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, or Tanzania remain heavily reliant on external partners for maritime domain awareness and defense assistance. China has exploited this asymmetry by positioning itself as both a security partner and a development financier, blurring the distinction between economic cooperation and strategic alignment.
By offering maritime law enforcement vessels, coastal radar systems, and port construction aid, Beijing effectively creates zones of influence that limit the operational latitude of other powers. This approach represents a non-traditional A2/AD dynamic, one that relies more on political and infrastructural dependency than on conventional military force. However, for China to emerge as a credible resident power in the IOR, it must overcome a set of structural and perceptual challenges. Geographically, China is not a littoral state of the Indian Ocean; its maritime access is mediated through the Malacca Strait, a chokepoint that remains under the watch of rival powers.
This Malacca Dilemma has long haunted Chinese Strategic thinking, its attempts to mitigate this vulnerability, through overland corridors like China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and energy pipelines via Myanmar, reflect a broader anti-access mindset, to ensure that potential adversaries cannot interdict its energy lifelines. These corridors, though terrestrial, form part of a larger maritime denial architecture, ensuring logistical redundancy in times of crisis. Should China face maritime blockade scenarios, its diversified network of access routes and port facilities would act as a strategic shock absorber.
The A2/AD strategy in the IOR must contend with the technological reach and alliance structures of competing powers. The U.S through its network of bases in Diego Garcia, Bahrain and Qatar, maintains unmatched surveillance and strike capabilities. India, in turn has strengthened its eastern and western maritime commands, notably the Andaman & Nicobar command, which serves as a key node for monitoring the eastern approaches of the IOR.
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) and its growing emphasis on maritime domain awareness, through platforms like the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), pose a collective challenge to China’s ambitions. These mechanisms enhance transparency, effectively neutralizing Beijing’s strategy of ambiguity-based denial. Thus, China’s A2/AD efforts in the IOR must operate within multi-polar denial environment, where several powers are simultaneously enhancing their detection and response capabilities.
From an analytical standpoint, China’s approach represents a blend of hard and soft denial mechanisms. Traditional A2/AD is kinetic, focusing on missiles, air defense and submarines. China’s Indian Ocean model, by contrast, is geoeconomic and informational. It leverages Infrastructure diplomacy, digital infrastructure (such as Digital Silk Road) and surveillance networks to create a “web of influence” that constrains adversaries without the overt use of force. The emerging Blue Ocean Information Network, a constellation of undersea sensors, satellites and data cables, could in time provide China with an integrated maritime situational picture of the IOR. This would transform information dominance into a form of denial, where China can “see” first and act pre-emptively, effectively neutralizing adversaries operational flexibility.
The Counter-Narrative Challenge: Competing Perceptions and Legitimacy
For India and the United States, the challenge lies not only in countering China’s physical presence but also in responding to the logic of its strategic connectivity. Traditional deterrence frameworks are ill-suited to address infrastructure-led influence. While India has responded through capacity-building with smaller IOR states, promoting SAGAR (“Security and Growth for All in the Region”), and expanding naval partnerships, these efforts face structural limitations. Many of China’s partner countries depend heavily on Chinese financing and technology, making them reluctant to align openly against Beijing.
Consequently, even without direct military confrontation, China benefits from psychological and political denial, the hesitance of smaller states to facilitate the operations of rival navies within their waters. Moreover, China’s engagement with the IOR extends beyond hard strategy into normative and narrative realms. Through mechanisms like the China–Indian Ocean Region Forum on Development Cooperation and the Global Development Initiative (GDI), Beijing is reshaping the regional discourse on security, portraying itself as a “developmental stabilizer” rather than a revisionist power.
This aligns with a constructivist understanding of A2/AD: denial not merely as a physical act, but as a narrative of legitimacy. If regional states internalize China’s framing of its presence as benign, the very concept of “denial” becomes redundant, the adversaries are denied access not by force, but by perception.
Nevertheless, China’s rise as a resident power remains contested. The IOR’s strategic asymmetry, where multiple powers with overlapping interests operate ensures that no single state can unilaterally dominate. While China’s denial capabilities are expanding, they are also vulnerable to coalition countermeasures. The US retains technological superiority in undersea warfare; India enjoys geographic advantage; France and Australia contribute to surveillance and logistical networks in the southwest and eastern flanks. The evolution of A2/AD in the IOR, therefore is less about exclusion and more about mutual constraint, a competitive coexistence where each actor seeks to shape the operational limits of others.
Conclusion
In Conclusion, China’s A2/AD trajectory in the IOR must be understood as part of a broader strategic adaptation. It reflects Beijing’s transition from continental defense to maritime assertiveness, from regional security to global power projection. The IOR offers both opportunity and vulnerability, it is the gateway to China’s energy lifelines and a testing ground for its power projection. Through its geoeconomic instruments, digital networks and dual-use infrastructure, China is constructing flexible, non-kinetic form of denial that aligns with its global vision of a “maritime community with a shared future.” For rival powers, the challenge lies in recognizing that the next phase of maritime competition in the Indian Ocean will not be fought solely through fleets and missiles, but through Ports, Data and Narratives that silently redefines the boundaries of access and control.
