What Is China Really Up to in the Coco Islands?

Global Asia

IT WAS NOT SURPRISING that Chatham House, the London-based policy institute, would spark a renewed, heated debate about the geostrategic role of Myanmar’s Great Coco Island when it published on March 31 satellite images of what appeared to be new military installations on the island. But, John Pollock, the author of the exposé and a Chatham House-affiliated analyst, also added words of caution. According to his commentary on the photographs, the most common allegation is that since the early 1990s Myanmar has allowed a Chinese signals intelligence facility on the archipelago. Little evidence exists for such a facility, Pollock said, “bar a heavily weathered radar station, but recent satellite photographs have raised concern, especially in India.”

The Coco Islands — Great Coco, Little Coco and some smaller islets — are separated from the northernmost Indian Andaman Islands by the 40-kilometer-wide Coco Channel. The other side of the channel is the domain of the strategically important Andaman and Nicobar Command, the only tri-service theater command of the Indian Armed Forces. The Indian media were quick to claim that China is behind the new construction on Great Coco and, as the Hindustan Times reported on April 5, aims at expanding the “Chinese naval footprint in the region.”

But all that could be said for certain — judging from the photographs gathered by Maxar Technologies, a private, US-based company that specializes in satellite imagery — is that the 1,300-meter runway on Great Coco’s airport has been extended to 2,300 meters. It has also been widened and new hangars have been built. A new, large pier is visible as well as a causeway connecting a cleared area on the southern tip of Great Coco with a smaller, uninhabited islet a short distance off the coast. South of the runway is a radar station, construction of which began in 2014 and was completed two years later. According to Maxar: “Photographed in January 2023, the green dome covers the radar system to keep it protected from both the environment… and counter-surveillance efforts.”

What Maxar and Chatham House appear to have overlooked is relatively new construction on the uninhabited, densely forested Little Coco: a huge building in the middle of the island with two nearby helipads, and a road connecting that place with the coast. Similar projects can also be seen on Preparis, a small island in the waters between Great Coco and the Myanmar mainland. Even there, military-style buildings and two helipads away from the coast can be seen. As with the Cocos, Preparis is strictly off-limits to civilians.

On April 10, the foreign ministry in Beijing dismissed the reports of a Chinese-run spy post on Great Coco as “complete nonsense,” while Major-General Zaw Min Tun, spokesman for the Myanmar’s ruling junta, called them “absurd.” But those statements are unlikely to allay fears of some substantial Chinese military or intelligence involvement in a very sensitive maritime area. The controversy — and speculation — began in the early 1990s when the Myanmar military launched a program to upgrade its navy and naval facilities. The prestigious defense journal Jane’s Defence Weekly reported on Jan. 29, 1994, that technicians from China were present on Great Coco installing Chinese-supplied equipment. That revelation led to wild, often exaggerated coverage of the issue, especially in the Indian media. Then came a report in the now-defunct Hong Kong-based weekly the Far Eastern Economic Review on Jan. 30, 1997, of an unpublicized visit to Beijing by General Maung Aye, the vice chairman of the junta at the time, in October the year before. A deal had been finalized under which China would “train 300 Myanmar air force and navy officers in flying skills, naval duties, and the gathering of intelligence in coastal areas.”

​WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON?

​In contrast to those cautious and rather carefully worded reports, some analysts began to publish wild and exaggerated versions of what was happening in Myanmar. Brahma Chellaney, a prominent and prolific Indian commentator, said in a paper presented at a Myanmar conference in Stockholm, Sweden, in May 2008 that China’s security agencies “operate electronic-intelligence and maritime-reconnaissance facilities on the two Coco Islands in the Bay of Bengal. India transferred the Coco Islands to Burma in the 1950s, and Burma then leased the islands to China in 1994.” Similar claims appeared on numerous Indian websites, but historical records suggest otherwise. Australian Myanmar scholar Andrew Selth wrote in a detailed and very comprehensive study, “Burma’s Coco Islands: Rumours and Realities in the Indian Ocean” in November 2008 that the British colonial authorities in Calcutta transferred jurisdiction from private entrepreneurs on the Coco Islands, which at that time had little more than a lighthouse on them, to British Burma in 1882. Burma became a province of India in 1886, but that did not change the status of the islands. When Burma was separated from India in 1937 and became a separate colony, the Coco Islands remained Burmese territory. It never changed hands.

During a military caretaker government that ruled Burma (now Myanmar) from 1958 to 1960, political prisoners were sent to Great Coco and, in February 1969, an attempt was made to establish a penal colony based on Indonesia’s Buru Island concept, where the convicts would be both isolated and self-sufficient. Most of the convicts on Buru Island in Indonesia as well as Great Coco were members of communist or other leftist organizations. But while Buru Island became the involuntary home for thousands of convicts, only about 200 were sent to Great Coco — and they went on one hunger strike after another. After quite a few of them had died, the plan was abandoned in December 1971 and the remaining prisoners were sent back to the mainland. Remnants of the old prison camp can be seen near the entrance to the causeway at the southern end of Great Coco. But India never “transferred” the islands to Myanmar, they were not “leased” to China, and there has never been any Chinese base there, only a Myanmar naval base, which was upgraded with Chinese assistance. In the 1990s, the Chinese also helped the Myanmar navy modernize and improve the performance of naval bases on the mainland.

Nothing was heard about the Coco Islands until those upgrades and new construction projects began — and fanciful reports flooded the media. According to classified documents from the Myanmar military’s Department of Procurement seen by this writer, the country’s armed forces did, however, make substantial acquisitions of Chinese military hardware beginning on a large scale in 1993. Apart from tanks, other military vehicles, different types of aircraft and heavy artillery, the documents list four unspecified radars for the navy and 12 JLP40 and JLG43 radars, presumably for the air force and the army. But those radars seem to have been meant for navigation and height finding rather than surveillance, and fit into the pattern of the paranoia of the generals in power. When a nationwide, pro-democracy uprising shook the country and was brutally crushed by the military in August and September 1988, the US condemned the carnage, which cost thousands of lives. The US also deployed naval ships in the waters off Myanmar, a move that made the generals believe that they were there to invade and help topple the junta that had seized power in Yangon on Sept. 18. In reality, the ships had been dispatched to, if necessary, help evacuate US citizens. But the generals were never convinced and, therefore, have been busy strengthening Myanmar’s coastal and air defenses ever since. When General Thura Shwe Mann paid a secret visit to North Korea in November 2008, a radar factory was among the facilities he and his delegation went to see. Details about the trip and photos where leaked and show that the visitors from Myanmar also gave a PowerPoint presentation about radars. The images indicate that Thura Shwe Mann and his men wanted them installed along the coast, around the old capital Yangon and the newly built capital of Naypyidaw, again reflecting paranoid fears of a foreign invasion.

CHINESE EQUIPMENT FOR WHAT?

​There is hardly any doubt that the radars and other equipment that were installed on Great Coco in the 1990s and what has been delivered more recently come from China. But the question is what use the Chinese would have for a “ground station” on an island in the Bay of Bengal. Buildings and other installations that can be gleaned from Google Earth images appear to be too small for advanced operations such as monitoring missile tests on India’s east coast, and that appears to be what the Indians fear the most. China’s advanced satellites and its Yuan Wang tracking ships would be far more useful for such intelligence gathering. Those ships have powerful satellite and missile tracking and surveillance capabilities, and they are regularly deployed to three major oceans — the Western Pacific, the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean. They are officially classified as non-military research vessels which support, track and control missions of China’s Shenzhou spacecraft and spaceflight programs. They are nevertheless operated by the People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force, which is responsible for space, cyber and electronic warfare. In short, they are spy ships packed with all sorts of communication and surveillance gear.

In November 2022, one of those ships, the Yuan Wang 6, entered the Indian Ocean, only three months after its sister ship Yuan Wang 5 had docked at Hambantota, a port in Sri Lanka that was built with financial support from China and is now managed by a Chinese firm through a 99-year lease agreement. The August mission by Yuan Wang 5 was widely publicized in India, where the news site NDTV said the government was concerned about “the possibility of the ship’s tracking systems attempting to snoop on Indian installations while on its way to Sri Lanka.” After the November mission, the Sri Lankan website The Morning reported: “This was not the first time that the Yuan Wang 6 has voyaged into the Indian Ocean, with one visit reported early in 2020 that lasted nearly three months.” Then on Jan. 6, 2022, an unidentified high-altitude balloon was spotted in the skies above the Andamans, only days after the Indian military had concluded an important, tri-service drill on the islands. It was never confirmed that it was a Chinese spy balloon, but the similarities with incidents in the United States and elsewhere are striking. In February, the US Air Force even shot down with great fanfare what Washington claimed was a balloon meant for spying. The Chinese have always insisted that the balloons are civilian research vessels.

A more plausible explanation for China’s involvement in the upgrading of Myanmar’s naval bases in the 1990s is that it should be seen as a goodwill gesture that would help Beijing secure and perhaps even expand its influence in the country. The radars that China delivered in the 1990s may not have been that sophisticated, but that is not to say that old and new installations on the Coco Islands cannot be used for some limited signals intelligence gathering from which the Chinese could benefit. But the Myanmar military’s thoughts behind the projects, no matter how far-fetched it may seem, remain fear and paranoia. The Chinese probably view the issue more realistically, and with other considerations in mind. They want Myanmar to be a close ally because it is the only neighboring country that provides it with easy and convenient access to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the contested South China Sea and the narrow Malacca Strait, or the so-called China-Myanmar Economic Corridor. And that is more important than what may or may not be happening on the Coco Islands. China’s supply of oil from the Middle East and minerals from Africa, and its exports of all kinds of goods to those parts of the world and to European markets go through those waters. It is, in other words, understandable why China for the first time in modern history is establishing a presence in the Indian Ocean. The voyages of the Yuan Wang spy ships are one aspect of that; frequent visits to the Indian Ocean by Chinese submarines are another. In 2017, China also established its first overseas military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa and the gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

VENUE FOR CONFLICT

​China’s presence in the Indian Ocean is a new development that could lead to conflicts with other powers in the region. India considers the Indian Ocean “its lake,” and its powerful navy patrols it from numerous bases on the country’s coasts — and the Andamans near the Coco Islands. The US military has a huge base on Diego Garcia, an island in the British Indian Ocean Territory, Britain’s last and only possession in the region. Washington leases Diego Garcia from Britain and the base played an important role in both Gulf Wars as well as for US combat operations in Afghanistan. Thousands of US troops are stationed on Diego Garcia, which also houses sophisticated radar, space tracking and a communications facility. It has also been used for long-range bomber operations and the replenishment of nuclear-powered submarines. The French maintain a significant military and military-related presence on their Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Kerguelen. Australia controls two Indian Ocean island territories, Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands — not to be confused with Myanmar’s Coco Islands. The 2016 Australian Defence White Paper stated that the airfield on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands will be upgraded to support Australia’s maritime patrol aircraft, possibly as part of a plan to enhance security in the Indian Ocean region.

China securing a presence in the Indian Ocean — and its interests overlapping with and even challenging those of the “old” Indian Ocean powers — are the main issues at stake here. What may or may not be happening on the Coco Islands plays only a small role in this geopolitical imbroglio.