Not India’s Ocean: Ideology and Hierarchy in China’s Presence in the Indian Ocean

China is a significant economic player in the Indian Ocean Region, and it is also well on its way to becoming a major security actor. Over a decade since its launch, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has changed the landscape – often, literally – in several Indian Ocean littoral states. But Chinese initiatives are more than about filling infrastructure development gaps in the developing world. They are also about countering dominant Western liberal ideals, undermining them and then entering the resulting vacuum to fill it with a Chinese view of the world. The uniqueness of the Chinese model, however, lies not just in its pursuit of these objectives through frontal attacks on Western values, norms, and interests though these do take place. Rather, it is in the use of Chinese material capacities – infrastructure development, their scale and speed of implementation – to promote an argument of the inefficiency and failure of Western liberalism and democracy. It is this performance – and the resulting narrative – that allows Beijing to exploit tensions between the Global South and the Western developed world over political behaviour and norms, and to encourage local ruling elites to align with its interests. What, however, is the Chinese view of the world? What might Pax Sinica look like? This presentation uses examples from China’s presence in the Indian Ocean Region to argue that a Chinese order, while no less hegemonic than any order it would replace is also going to be different in terms of how it deploys ideology and hierarchy to work around Western (and Indian) presence as well as potential local opposition. And in this difference lies the attractiveness of the ‘China model’ and its ability to win without firing a shot.

Register Now