NEW DELHI: Striking a fine balance, Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta and two Indian warships will be visiting China to take part in its International Fleet Review (IFR) this month, even as India gears up for the trilateral Malabar naval wargames with US and Japan soon after.
The deft counter-balancing is to ensure China is not miffed, especially since Beijing is always quick to view any multi-lateral naval grouping in its neighbourhood as part of a grand strategy to build a security cooperation axis in the Asia-Pacific region to "contain'' it.
| I think it would be appropriate if the Indians did 'miff' the Chinese. The Chinese just recently reasserted their claim to parts of India. Be a good idea to push back a little. |
The 13th Indo-US Malabar wargames held in Bay of Bengal in September 2007 had led to a formal protest by China, especially as they were expanded to include the Australian, Japanese and Singaporean navies.
CPM and CPI, who were then supporting the UPA government, too, had jumped into the fray, claiming the US was using India as a tool against China. Scarred by the protest, the government had restricted the Malabar exercise in 2008 to just India and US.
Things, however, are different now. With the Left albatross no longer hanging around its neck, the government has given the go-ahead to include Japan in this year's Malabar exercise to be held in the "general area of Okinawa''.
Admiral Mehta, however, will first be leaving for China on April 19, with two guided-missile destroyers, the 6,900-tonne INS Mumbai and 5,000-tonne INS Ranvir, already on their way to the northern Chinese naval port of Qingdao for the IFR scheduled from April 20 to 24.
"Admiral Mehta will be delivering a speech on `maritime cooperation, diplomacy and constructive engagement' during the symposium to be held with the IFR. It's part of our broader engagement with Beijing. Chinese Navy chief Admiral Wu Shengli had visited India last year,'' said an official.
After the IFR, INS Mumbai and INS Ranvir will be joined by missile corvette INS Khanjar and tanker INS Jyoti to undertake combat manoeuvres with American and Japanese warships in the Malabar wargames. "Since our warships were already on an overseas deployment, usually undertaken to show our presence and ability in our primary area of interest, and headed for the Chinese IFR, we have utilised the opportunity to hold Malabar off Japan this time,'' he added.
India may want to be seen as "a neutral player'' in the entire power-play but the fact is that it remains extremely wary of China's swift modernisation of its armed forces, the military infrastructure build-up in the Tibet Autonomous Region and, of course, its deep strategic nexus with Pakistan.
Moreover, Beijing has been increasingly making strategic moves in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), which India views as its own backyard, to secure its expanding energy needs. Experts reckon China will soon start making regular naval forays in the IOR.
China, of course, is leagues ahead of India in military capabilities. If India has just 16 conventional diesel-electric submarines, for instance, China has 62, 10 of them nuclear-powered and at least three armed with long-range strategic ballistic missiles (SSBNs).
China's underwater prowess was rudely brought home by the discovery of the sheer extent of its underground nuclear submarine base on the southern tip of Hainan Island, which will also house its new Shang-class (Type-093) nuclear-powered attack submarines and the Jin-class (Type-094) SSBNs. 
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