As a Tiny Island Is Militarized, India Worries About China’s Growing Footprint

Chinese military officers attend a ceremony to mark Myanmar's 78th Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw on March 27, 2023. A 2021 military coup in Myanmar left the country isolated from the West and more economically dependent on China.(Photo: AFP)
Chinese military officers attend a ceremony to mark Myanmar's 78th Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw on March 27, 2023. A 2021 military coup in Myanmar left the country isolated from the West and more economically dependent on China.(Photo: AFP)

Summary

  • Satellite images track a decade of construction on Myanmar’s strategically located Great Coco Island

India is monitoring a strategically located island in the Bay of Bengal over concerns China could be involved in a buildup of infrastructure there, including an expanded airstrip, aircraft hangars, a pier and a dome that protects radar equipment, Indian security officials said.

Satellite images captured over a decade show the gradual buildup on Myanmar’s Great Coco Island, which lies north of an archipelago that hosts a significant Indian military presence, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In addition to the new infrastructure, equipment is visible at the site that could be used to track aircraft, one of the officials said.

Chinese engineers and military personnel have been spotted on the island in recent years, according to the official, who said that bolsters New Delhi’s assessment that Beijing could be providing technological and other backing for Great Coco’s militarization.

A 2021 military coup in Myanmar left the country isolated from the West and more economically dependent on China. Against that backdrop, an expansion of military and surveillance activities on Great Coco could, directly or indirectly, allow Beijing to better monitor India’s naval ship movements, satellite launches and missile tests—the splashdowns are close by—according to the official as well as a former Indian security adviser who has studied the issue.

Myanmar’s junta didn’t respond to requests for comment, nor did India’s foreign and defense ministries. China’s foreign ministry called reports of Chinese involvement on Great Coco “pure nonsense."

For years, New Delhi has raised concerns over China’s presence in the waters surrounding India. It worries that a strategically located Chinese-run port in Sri Lanka could be used for military activities. China-India relations have deteriorated sharply since 2020, when deadly clashes broke out on their disputed Himalayan border.

Globally, Beijing has steadily expanded its military footprint through a series of incremental moves. It has militarized reefs across the South China Sea and built its first overseas military base in Djibouti. U.S. officials say it is establishing a naval outpost in Cambodia.

Concerns about its surveillance efforts have also grown. A 2019 investigation by The Wall Street Journal found that engineers for China’s Huawei Technologies Co. had helped intelligence officers in Uganda and Zambia spy on government opponents. In 2021, the Journal reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had learned China was secretly building what they believed was a military facility at a commercial port in the United Arab Emirates. The Emirati government appeared unaware of the site’s military nature, and construction was halted after consultation with the U.S.

Washington is concerned by Beijing’s efforts to create a global network of logistics and base infrastructure, said Lt. Col. Martin Meiners, a Pentagon spokesman, though he didn’t address the issue of Great Coco. He said the U.S. is particularly concerned by a “lack of transparency and clarity around the terms it negotiates with host countries and the intended purposes of these facilities."

Media reports that Great Coco housed a secret Chinese signals-intelligence facility first surfaced in the early 1990s, though there was never any evidence and they were later dismissed by officials in the region as rumors. The island, home to about 1,500 people, measures roughly 3 square miles, a little more than twice the size of New York City’s Central Park.

A decade ago, it was little more than a strip of sparsely inhabited jungle, with a small airstrip and a smattering of houses shaded by palm trees. That began to change around 2014 with the lengthening of the airstrip. The radar site began emerging the same year, with new construction and upgrades continuing in different parts of the island.

In late March, Chatham House, a London-based policy think tank partly funded by the U.K. government, published a report with recent satellite images showing what it called “a steady makeover, with telltale signs of military modernization and facilities to support aircraft."

“India may soon face a new air base close by in a country increasingly tied to Beijing," the report said, pointing to the radar station, pier, airstrip and hangar expansion captured in the satellite images, which were provided by Maxar Technologies. The authors said the size of the hangars, which appear to be about 130 feet wide, is more consistent with military aircraft than many commercial or civil planes.

If such a base is fully established, surveillance flights could track movements to and from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and survey the Indian Ocean, they said. That intelligence could end up in the hands of Beijing, either shared by Myanmar or obtained through Chinese espionage, the report said.

All available evidence suggests the Myanmar military is leading the effort on Great Coco, and none of the images link it to China, the report’s authors said in an email.

Situated between China and India, Myanmar is strategically important to both Asian powers. The two are developing rival economic zones, energy projects and trade links along its western coast, though the scale of China’s investments is larger.

China is establishing an economic corridor to connect its landlocked southwest to the city of Kyaukphyu on Myanmar’s western coast, where it plans to build a deep-sea port. The corridor also includes oil and gas pipelines that came online in recent years. A new railway line is planned.

Though mired in a decadeslong civil war that has worsened since the coup, Myanmar has no real external enemies. Still, junta leader Gen. Min Aung Hlaing has long sought to strengthen its coastal defenses. He went to Great Coco in 2014 to oversee the Sea-Shield exercises, wargames in which sailors practiced formations and struck a target vessel using Chinese ship-destroyer missiles, according to a military-run news agency.

Mr. Min Aung Hlaing has visited the island 19 times since 2012, most recently this month to christen a scenic viewpoint called the “Victory Post." He visited what the news agency described as a local navy base and met with town elders, pledging to develop the island as a tourist destination and improve livelihoods.

At least for now, Great Coco may not be very valuable to China, some defense analysts say, given the country’s advanced space-based surveillance capabilities. “It would give China an extra access point in the Indian Ocean, though it looks like it’s a tiny footprint," said Ian Storey, an expert on regional security at the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. Still, he added, Beijing’s attitude is likely to be “the more, the better."

“Militaries all over the world," he said, “have an almost insatiable appetite for intelligence."

Write to Feliz Solomon at feliz.solomon@wsj.com and Rajesh Roy at rajesh.roy@wsj.com

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