The key competitor that China faces in the IOR is India, which has responded to China’s expanding naval activities by building up its own naval capabilities, including naval infrastructure. That includes the procurement of surveillance drones such as the MQ-9B Sea Guardian to monitor Chinese maritime movements.

The Indian Government’s push for a major military and infrastructure upgrade of its Andaman and Nicobar Islands (especially given the proximity to the Malacca Strait) is a case in point. Runway expansion at the Indian naval station Kohassa in the North Andamans to support P-8I maritime patrol aircraft is a key development. Additional planned work includes the development of an international container transhipment terminal, a dual-use civil and military airport, and a power plant on Great Nicobar Island.

India has also sought to improve relations with the IOR littoral states. India’s initiatives, such as SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region), with the goal of enhancing cooperation with its maritime neighbours in the Indian Ocean, are good steps, but scaling up cooperation in terms of capacity-building for smaller neighbours in the region appears to remain a challenge.

SAGAR was given an additional boost when the Modi government announced a new and expanded maritime outreach initiative, titled MAHASAGAR, which stands for ‘Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions’. The new initiative, announced by Modi during his visit to Mauritius in March 2025, is meant to move away from a limited regional focus in the Indian Ocean to a broader proactive maritime engagement across the wider Indo-Pacific.

In addition, India has cooperated with strategic partners such as the US, Australia and Japan through the Quad in order to strengthen their capabilities in the region, both in providing economic and other assistance to the region but also in countering China’s expanding naval capabilities.

For example, India conducts the Malabar series of naval exercises, which now include all the Quad partners. In fact, the primary focus of the Quad is on maritime security and specifically, on maritime and underwater domain awareness, which is another way of referring to monitoring China’s naval activities in the region. But this kind of cooperation among the Quad and other such partnerships will have to shift from being sporadic to being undertaken more frequently for meaningful effectiveness against sustained presence and expansion by China in the Indian Ocean.

The Quad’s Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) can become a more sustained and institutional cooperation initiative in this regard. Considering the technological strengths of the four countries, including in space, the IPMDA is a key tool for the Quad to continually monitor maritime activities across the Indo-Pacific—an essential step for regional security and stability. The recent announcement of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration following the Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting in May 2026 is an important step in this regard.

Furthermore, India has concluded reciprocal military logistics agreements with a number of maritime partners, including the US, France, Australia and Japan, as well as with countries such as Oman, which are helpful in keeping track of China’s presence in Djibouti and the broader IOR. Along with better coordination, such agreements could lead to some sort of division of labour and burden sharing among those countries, considering that every country can’t be involved in every single theatre of action. India also hosts the Information Fusion Centre – Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR), near Delhi, which is also designed to provide greater awareness of maritime activities around the Indian Ocean.

However, it must also be noted that, as China’s naval capabilities are enhanced, India is unlikely to be able to keep pace by itself. China already has three aircraft carriers, with more on the way, and all of them are larger than the two India currently has. While China’s attention is currently focused on the Taiwan Strait, and the South and East China seas, it should be expected that Beijing will turn its attention to the Indian Ocean as its capabilities improve and whenever the Taiwan issue is resolved.

Smaller Indian Ocean island states such as Sri Lanka and the Maldives have often used China’s growing footprint as a lever for better economic growth and overall development as well as for tourism and critical-infrastructure development. That strategy has had its pitfalls as well, illustrated by the inability of the Sri Lankan Government to pay back loans from China, which led to Sri Lanka being forced to accept the 99-year lease of Hambantota Port to China. Both Sri Lanka and the Maldives have also used China as a means to contest India’s dominance in the region.

Pakistan and China have been security partners since the 1960s, and their relationship has strengthened in the recent past. It’s clear that Islamabad welcomes China’s military expansion because it provides a potential counter to India. Thus, Pakistan’s approach is one of strategic embrace and deeper economic integration.

Bangladesh’s relations with China have gone through changes. Historically, Bangladesh has been close to India and therefore Dhaka has been careful about antagonising it by developing close ties with China. But, since the change of regime in 2024, it has sought to have a more even relationship. However, considering China’s heavy involvement across multiple sectors, including in the construction of bridges, power plants and deep-sea facilities, one can conclude that Bangladesh has implemented a strategy of economic pragmatism while hedging strategically.