India, China ships compete for sea lanes

By GAVIN RABINOWITZ

Hambantota, Sri Lanka

June 8: This battered harbour town on Sri Lanka’s southern tip seems an unlikely focus for an emerging international competition over energy supply routes that fuel much of the global economy.

An impoverished place still recovering from the devastation of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Hambantota has a desolate air, a sense of nowhereness, punctuated by the realisation that looking south over the expanse of ocean, the next landfall is Antarctica.

But just over the horizon runs one of the world’s great trade arteries, the shipping lanes where thousands of vessels carry oil from the Middle East and raw materials to Asia, returning with television sets, toys and sneakers for European consumers.

These tankers provide 80 per cent of China’s oil and 65 per cent of India’s. Japan, too, is almost totally depen-dent on fuel shipped through the Indian Ocean. Any disruption — from terrorism, piracy, natural disaster or war — could have devastating effects on these countries and, in an increasingly interdependent world, send ripples across the globe.

For decades the world relied on the powerful US Navy to protect this vital sea lane. But as India and China gain economic heft, they are moving to expand their control of the waterway, sparking a new — and potentially dangerous — rivalry betw-een Asian giants.

China has given massive aid to Indian Ocean nations, signing friendship pacts, building ports in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Sri Lanka, and reportedly setting up a listening post on one of Myanmar’s islands.

Now, India is trying to parry China’s moves. It beat out China for a port project in Myanmar. And, flush with cash from its expanding economy, India is beefing up its military. Washington and, to a lesser extent, Tokyo are encouraging In-dia’s role as a counterweight to growing Chinese power.

Among China’s latest moves is the billion dollar port its engineers are building in Sri Lanka, an island country just off India’s southern coast. The Chinese insist the Hambantota port is a commercial move, and by all appearances, it is. But some in India see ominous designs behind it. — AP