As India and China continued their seemingly endless negotiations on the boundary dispute last week in Delhi, there was another event in faraway Cochin at the southern tip of the subcontinent.

The port call at Cochin this week by the Chinese warship ‘Shenzen’ is not the first interaction between the two navies; nor will it be the last. But the interaction is just not enough. If Beijing and Delhi don’t quickly embark on substantive maritime confidence-building, their future conflict in the Indian and Pacific Oceans is likely to overshadow their territorial tensions in inner Asia.

If their boundary dispute is a political legacy from the twentieth century, China and India are now staring at the prospect of a sustained maritime rivalry in the twenty first century. Beijing and Delhi are now strongly committed to a massive modernisation of their navies. Acquiring ‘blue water’ fleets is now integral to the story of their unfolding rise in the international system.

If the Indian Navy dispatched naval contingents to both the Northern Pacific in the East and the Baltic Sea in the West this summer, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has marked 2009 by mounting sustained operations in the Gulf of Aden. The ‘Shenzen’ is in fact returning home after participating in the Indian Ocean operations.

As both navies acquire the ability to operate at long distances and mount operations far from their home territory, their strategic footprints are bound to overlap and lead to mutual mistrust.

If Delhi and Beijing are wise enough to anticipate the potential maritime conflict coming at them with some force, they would encourage their navies to begin an honest dialogue on their mutual concerns and expand the scope of interaction.

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