“The people here have golden-brown skin, and the sunsets are very beautiful,” a Portuguese envoy reported from Malacca in 1541.
Thirty years earlier, the Portuguese had taken control of the trading city on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. From there, they could enjoy the sight of the sunsets and the sailing ships gliding past in the tropical breeze.
Today, Malacca has lost its importance as a hub of shipping in Southeast Asia. But the Strait of Malacca is busier than ever. Last year, more than 100,000 large vessels passed through the narrow passage. It becomes narrower still when ships enter the Phillips Channel near Singapore. There, the fairway is only 2.8 kilometres wide. In other words, one of the world’s most important sea lanes is, at its narrowest point, no wider than the distance from Aker Brygge to Bygdøy.
Is it any wonder that leaders in Beijing, Tokyo and other capitals worry about what might happen if the Strait of Malacca, too, were drawn into a major conflict?
In Beijing, the alarm bells began ringing many years ago. In the early 1990s, China began importing oil and gas to meet its rapidly growing needs. But almost all the freight had to pass through the Strait of Malacca, where China had little or no influence. Formal control rested with the littoral states, above all Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. And it is still these three countries that call the shots.
At the same time, the strait is an international passage protected by clear rules. Under the law of the sea, ships have the right of so-called transit passage. This means that merchant vessels and other ships should, in principle, be able to pass through unhindered as long as they observe the rules for safe navigation. But what do laws and rules mean in a possible wartime situation? The ongoing crisis in Hormuz and the Red Sea has once again set alarm bells ringing in Beijing and other centres of power.
“We must recognize the seriousness of the situation and be prepared when danger arises,” the Chinese security expert Zhang Yongze stated recently.
China is the largest user of the Strait of Malacca. About 75 percent of the country’s crude oil imports pass through the strait. For Japan and South Korea, the dependence is even greater. In addition, all three countries import and export enormous quantities of other goods along the same route. Without an open strait, the dynamic economies of East Asia risk grinding to a halt. Taiwan, a fourth Asian “miracle economy”, finds itself in the same difficult position.
Fortunately, the Strait of Malacca has remained open since the end of the Second World War. But the war years from 1942 to 1945 offered a costly lesson. In 1941, Japan’s Imperial Army advanced into Malaya, and the following year Singapore, at the southern tip of the peninsula, fell. The British thereby lost control of the strait. Allied ships risked being attacked, seized or sunk if they tried to enter. The closure understandably had catastrophic consequences for trade and for the balance of power in the region.
There is little to suggest that anything similar will happen in the foreseeable future. But Asia is changing, and nothing is as it was. China is rearming at a rapid pace, not least at sea, and so are the United States, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and several other countries. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is determined to turn his country into a maritime power.
Today, the Strait of Malacca is controlled militarily by the nearby coastal states, that is, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore — with Thailand as a less important fourth participant. No foreign great power has any military role. But the United States has a significant presence in the area, and the US Seventh Fleet uses the Changi naval base in Singapore for maintenance and logistics.
China has no similar arrangement, but Chinese naval vessels — nuclear submarines, destroyers and supply ships — are using the strait with increasing frequency. Military experts believe that China’s long-term goal is to send its aircraft carriers through the strait and into the Indian Ocean. For the time being, they operate mostly in home waters, particularly in the conflict-ridden South China Sea.
In Beijing’s inner chambers, the “Malacca dilemma” is the subject of constant discussion. The term was coined in 2003 by Hu Jintao, then president and party leader. Since China is not yet capable of driving the United States out of the region, it is spending enormous sums trying to build its way around the problem.
The launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 was a milestone in this respect. At a conference in Kazakhstan attended by envoys from across Central Asia, President Xi Jinping announced that China would spend billions developing new infrastructure across Asia: motorways, railways, oil and gas pipelines, ports, airports and more.
Thirteen years have now passed, and much has happened. Yet despite all the construction, China remains almost as dependent on the Strait of Malacca as before. More oil and gas is indeed being pumped from Russia and Central Asia, and an oil pipeline has been laid from the coast of Myanmar to southwestern China. But the volumes are not large enough to meet the country’s enormous needs. Think of China as a gigantic factory. Without sufficient energy, the machines stop.
Today, the country has oil reserves large enough to cover its needs for some time, but not for a year or two. That is precisely why the relationship with Russia is so important. Even so, the Russian oil flow has its limits. The existing pipelines to China are already operating close to full capacity.
If Russia is to sell even more oil to China, it must be shipped by tanker from Russian ports in the Baltic Sea or the Black Sea. The ships would have to sail all the way around Europe and Asia — and, ironically, pass through the Strait of Malacca to reach Chinese ports. This detour therefore does not solve China’s “Malacca dilemma”. Xi Jinping also wants to limit China’s dependence on Russia, a country with a shaky economy and an uncertain future.
That leaves only one option: to accelerate China’s transition to renewable energy sources. Last week, the country’s National Energy Administration, the NEA, presented its ambitious plan for the next five years. The aim is to increase the share of non-fossil energy in electricity production from today’s 42 percent to 50 percent. That means new billions for solar, wind and hydropower, areas in which China is already the world leader.
By far the largest project is the ongoing construction of several dam facilities on the Brahmaputra River, near the border with India and Bangladesh. With a planned capacity of 70 gigawatts, they will produce more than three times as much electricity as the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River — until now the largest in the world. The cost is estimated at 172 billion US dollars.
It is part of the story that many have protested against the project, above all the Tibetans who live in the mountainous valley — but also neighbouring countries. Yet this does not trouble the rulers in Beijing, who have only one thing in mind: ensuring that China survives under all circumstances.
faeroevi@online.no