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China’s push to end the ‘Malacca Dilemma’ through Myanmar and Thailand – Firstpost

China’s push to end the ‘Malacca Dilemma’ through Myanmar and Thailand – Firstpost


Between January 16 and 24, 2025, nine navies from the Indo-Pacific—India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and Canada, the US, UK, and France—are holding multilateral exercises around critical choke points near the straits of Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans. These routes are crucial for China, whom these navies are meant to deter from violating Freedom of Navigation after Beijing rejected the 2016 UNCLOS verdict and promulgated its 9 Dash Line in the South China Sea. Taiwan and the Philippines have borne the brunt of Chinese bullying in the SCS. Such a show of force sends clear signals to Beijing on the vulnerability of the straits, especially when their custodians—Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia—are integral participants.

The Strait of Malacca. Source: South Asia Journal
The Strait of Malacca. Source: South Asia Journal

On January 13, 2025, Miemie Winn Byrd, a Burmese American retired Army officer from the Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies (APCSS) in Honolulu, Hawaii, while addressing the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi on Myanmar’s civil war and China’s pivotal role in the country, said that Beijing has now categorically committed its support for the junta in conducting this November’s elections—annually postponed since the coup in 2021. It has also changed its dual policy of assisting both the junta and selected ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) to virtually abandoning most of them in favour of full support for the regime. It coerced the Myanmar National Democratic Army Alliance to stop operations against the junta in the north.

But her repeated emphasis was on the strategic Coco Islands leased to China in 1994 by Myanmar, the runway built there in 2020, and Kyaukphyu Deep Sea Port in the Andaman Sea, which is the gateway to the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, where pipe and gas lines together with a railway line are under construction to Kunming in China but not completed due to fighting between the junta and EAOs. She described the project (coupled with the Coco Islands) as an alternative route to China’s Malacca dilemma. In 2003, at a Chinese Communist Party meeting, President Hu Jintao highlighted the absence of an alternative route and the vulnerability of the Strait of Malacca to naval blockade. Approximately 90 per cent of China’s trade is by sea, including 80 per cent of energy and 60 per cent of gas, and almost 60 per cent of all its trade moves through the Malacca Strait, making the dilemma acute.

President Donald Trump, whose second spell in the White House is expected to be a geopolitical tsunami, has warned Panama that the US would ’take back’ the Panama Canal. Israel wants to construct a canal across the Negev Desert bypassing the volatile Red Sea to connect with the Mediterranean Sea. Countries seek to avoid choke points that pose risk for movement by sea. Along the narrow neck of southern Myanmar and Thailand connecting the Malay peninsula to the Asian mainland is the Isthmus of Kra, also called Devil’s Neck, like our own Chicken’s Neck in the Siliguri Corridor. It is across this strip of land that Thailand is constructing a land bridge to join the Andaman Sea in the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Thailand in the South China Sea/Pacific Ocean, and I am nearby studying the proposed connection.

In May 2024, the office of the Transport and Traffic Policy Planning Department of Thailand prepared a feasibility study of a land bridge under the South East Economic Corridor connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The 90-km land bridge across the Kra Isthmus will connect deep-sea ports of Ranong in the Andaman Sea with Chumphon in the Gulf of Thailand. In 2015, China and Thailand are believed to have signed an agreement on building the land bridge, which would take ten years to complete at the cost of $27-35 billion. In September 2024, Thailand’s transport minister, Suriya Jungrungreangkit, announced that construction of the land bridge will begin in 2026 and be completed in 2030. Earlier in August, 2024, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said that China’s investment will be forthcoming, with the Bangkok Post adding that the principal beneficiary will be China and other countries like Korea and Japan.

The Strait of Malacca is 800 km long, 65 to 250 km wide, and 2.8 km at its narrowest, Point Philip. 250 ships transit through it daily, and mostly cargo ships that cause congestion. By 2030, it will reach its capacity. Any closure of Malacca by accident or design is estimated to cost $100 million a week. During the Gulf War, Indian naval ships were escorting US shipping through the Malacca Strait. So, in the event of a naval blockade of the Strait of Malacca, as feared by President Hu, Chinese shipping has two choices: use the alternative routes further south near Indonesia or try to break the naval blockade. Alternative routes are through the Sunda, Lombok, and Makassar Straits, which are shallow for submarines and would extend travel by sea by two to three days, incurring additional time and cost. One estimate put the add-on cost for use of alternative routes at a staggering $200 billion a year.

As for the use of force, the PLA Navy does not have the requisite naval capability to do that, especially in the Indian Ocean Region, at least for the next decade or so. While the PLA Navy (PLAN) may have adequate quantity (nearly 300 seagoing vessels), it lacks quality—firepower—to deter or fight a blockade. The power projection capability of the PLAN, when it will hugely surpass the US Navy, will manifest only by 2035. China is therefore backing the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), in which it has invested heavily, and proceeding full steam to keep the junta in power, hoping for a political resolution with the anti-regime resistance forces. It is planning to deploy Chinese private security forces along with the junta for the protection of its strategic assets like mining rare earths, hydropower projects, and CMEC. But political stability in Myanmar could take longer than Beijing might hope for.

China’s backup to CMEC for skirting the Malacca Strait might therefore be the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand. With a declining economy, Bangkok is relying heavily on the mega land project, which is touted as the key catalyst for its economy. The strategic and economic costs for Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia will be enormous. It is also likely to alter the maritime dynamics of the region, depriving India of the leverage in the Indian Ocean Region to compensate for its diminished deterrence along LAC. The US will lose in tandem with India. But for China, it could end its Malacca Dilemma.

The author is former GOC IPKF South Sri Lanka and founder member Defence Planning Staff, now Integrated Defence Staff, Ministry of Defence. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.



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