China-India Great Game taking shape on the Bay of Bengal

While the focus of global news remains on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz and the Russia-Ukraine war, a significant new arena of contestation has opened in the Bay of Bengal. In April this year, India’s National Maritime Security Strategy 2026 (INMSS-2026) identified the eastern Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal as emerging arenas of long-term strategic competition. It also highlighted that the next phase of maritime competition would be shaped by ports, logistics networks, supply chains, critical infrastructure, digital connectivity and sustained competition below the threshold of conflict. China is now moving to accelerate the China-Myanmar-Bangladesh Economic Corridor, which is far more than another Belt and Road Initiative project. It reflects a reassessment of how Beijing secures access to the Indian Ocean at a time when geopolitical conflict, insurgencies and regional instability are steadily destabilizing several of its principal overland connectivity routes, notably the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the Chahbahar-Zahedan Corridor and the Middle Corridor around Iran. China’s growing emphasis on the China-Myanmar-Bangladesh Economic Corridor underscores both these uncertainties and the Bay of Bengal’s rapid emergence as a strategic frontier that places India’s eastern seaboard, Great Nicobar and wider maritime strategy under sharper focus. Conflicts and uncertainties elsewhere have made the Bay of Bengal, long regarded as a secondary theater in China’s maritime strategy, more significant to Beijing than ever. The Iran-US conflict has increased the risks surrounding westward connectivity through Iran and the Persian Gulf. Even if infrastructure remains intact, conflict, sanctions, insurance costs and ongoing hostilities have made long-term security assurance and planning more difficult. CPEC has encountered a different challenge. Persistent attacks by Baloch rebels on Chinese nationals, transport infrastructure and security installations, coupled with the growing threat posed by Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and instability across the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, have transformed what was conceived as China’s flagship connectivity corridor into a high-risk zone requiring both close monitoring and security management. Meanwhile, Eurasian routes, including the Middle Corridor, remain exposed to geopolitical tensions, capacity constraints and political uncertainty across multiple transit states. It’s not that these corridors have ceased to function. Rather, each has become more vulnerable to disruption during periods of crisis. For Beijing, the challenge is therefore no longer simply securing access to overseas markets but ensuring assured access when geopolitical conditions deteriorate. As confidence in the uninterrupted availability of western corridors weakens, the strategic premium attached to China’s eastern gateway through Myanmar rises correspondingly. That changing calculus explains why Myanmar has acquired renewed strategic importance. The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor provides China’s landlocked Yunnan province with direct access to the Bay of Bengal through Kyaukphyu, bypassing both the Strait of Malacca and Pakistan. Existing oil and gas pipelines already provide an alternative energy route into southwest China, while planned road and rail links promise to strengthen commercial connectivity over time. For Beijing, Myanmar is no longer simply another BRI partner; it is becoming an increasingly important pillar of China’s Indian Ocean access strategy. Bangladesh as Myanmar hedge Yet Myanmar alone cannot hedge China’s strategic risk. Civil conflict in Rakhine and Shan states continues to complicate infrastructure development and threatens the long-term security of transport routes leading to Kyaukphyu. Just as insurgency has imposed growing costs on CPEC, Myanmar’s fragmented security environment constrains the predictability of the China-Myanmar corridor. This is where Bangladesh assumes growing importance. The proposed China-Myanmar-Bangladesh Economic Corridor is an effort to deepen the resilience of China’s Bay of Bengal access by adding further ports, logistics infrastructure, industrial capacity and commercial gateways to an existing network centered on a troubled Kyaukphyu port. Bangladesh’s ports, particularly Chattogram and potentially Mongla, complement rather than replace Myanmar’s maritime facilities. If instability periodically constrains operations in Kyaukphyu, expanded connectivity through Bangladesh provides additional flexibility while broadening China’s economic footprint across the northern Bay of Bengal, unlike Gwadar in Pakistan. Viewed in this context, the China-Myanmar-Bangladesh framework seeks to address a resilience problem for Beijing by reducing dependence on a single maritime node while creating a more distributed logistics architecture across the Bay of Bengal. However, the fundamental problems in Rakhine still render the corridor vulnerable. China’s strategy is also being shaped by changes around the Strait of Malacca itself. India’s agreement with Indonesia to develop Sabang Port, located near the northern entrance to the Strait of Malacca, complements New Delhi’s efforts to transform Great Nicobar into a major hub for logistics, surveillance and maritime operations. Together, they strengthen India’s ability to monitor traffic entering and leaving the eastern Indian Ocean. Indonesia’s expanding defense partnerships with the US, Japan and Australia further reinforce maritime cooperation, domain awareness and security coordination around Southeast Asia’s principal sea lanes. None of these arrangements is directed solely at China, but collectively they complicate Beijing’s long-term assumptions about uninterrupted access through Malacca. For Chinese planners, the logical response is to strengthen the one overland corridor that provides relatively direct access from Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal. As the strategic environment around both western land corridors and the Malacca gateway becomes more contested, uninterrupted connectivity through Myanmar assumes greater value. Extending that connectivity into Bangladesh further enlarges the number of logistics nodes, commercial gateways and maritime options available to China along the Bay of Bengal. The result is the gradual emergence of a more resilient Chinese connectivity network on India’s eastern maritime flank. India’s counter moves The implications of the shift extend well beyond infrastructure. They signal Beijing’s redistribution of strategic emphasis towards the Bay of Bengal itself. For India, whose maritime strategy increasingly emphasizes persistent competition, infrastructure, logistics and maritime domain awareness, the question is no longer whether China will gain another route to the Indian Ocean. It is whether the Bay of Bengal is becoming the principal arena through which Beijing seeks to secure its long-term strategic presence in the eastern Indian Ocean — a development that would place India’s maritime doctrine, Great Nicobar strategy and eastern seaboard at the center of the next phase of Indo-Pacific competition. China’s emerging Bay of Bengal strategy will reshape India’s maritime security environment. The significance of the proposed China-Myanmar-Bangladesh corridor lies not simply in another transport network but in the possibility that China is gradually constructing a distributed logistics and connectivity architecture across the northern Bay of Bengal. This presents India with a more complex strategic challenge than any single port or infrastructure project. This is precisely the kind of environment anticipated by India’s INMSS-2026. It does not focus exclusively on naval balances. It argues that economic corridors, commercial ports, energy infrastructure and dual-use facilities are becoming integral components of maritime power. China’s moves are therefore not isolated Belt and Road investments but part of a bigger strategic play whose cumulative effect could alter the balance of influence across the Bay of Bengal. For India, Great Nicobar assumes greater strategic importance within this evolving geography. Its major significance lies in its location near the Strait of Malacca and the Six Degree Channel, one of the principal maritime gateways connecting the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Great Nicobar strengthens India’s ability to sustain maritime domain awareness, logistical support and operational presence across the eastern Indian Ocean. It’s an investment in preserving India’s long-term strategic leverage in one of the world’s most consequential maritime crossroads. India’s cooperation in developing Sabang Port provides New Delhi with an important strategic foothold near the northern entrance to the Malacca Strait. Sabang complements India’s presence in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by extending its reach towards one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Together, Sabang and Great Nicobar provide India with greater capacity to monitor commercial traffic, strengthen maritime logistics and reinforce partnerships across the eastern Indian Ocean. The strategic picture is becoming even more layered because Indonesia itself has expanded defense cooperation with several Indo-Pacific partners. The US and Indonesia have elevated their relationship through a Major Defense Cooperation Partnership that deepens collaboration on maritime security, undersea capabilities, intelligence, cyber cooperation and advanced defense technologies. Indonesia has simultaneously broadened defense and maritime cooperation with Japan and Australia. None of these arrangements explicitly seeks to contain China. Collectively, however, they contribute to a denser security architecture around the Strait of Malacca and the eastern Indian Ocean, making China’s search for additional and more resilient access routes through Myanmar increasingly understandable. Implications for India The Bay of Bengal is consequently evolving into one of the principal theaters of Indo-Pacific strategic competition. This has direct implications for India’s eastern seaboard. Ports such as Kolkata, Paradip, Dhamra, Visakhapatnam, Chennai and the expanding infrastructure in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands support a growing share of India’s trade, naval logistics, industrial production and energy flows. A more substantial Chinese trade and logistical presence across Myanmar and Bangladesh therefore affects not merely naval deployments but the wider security of India’s maritime economy, including supply chains, port infrastructure, shipping services, digital connectivity, subsea infrastructure and trade influence long before it manifests itself in overt military terms. If there is one conclusion from China’s changing connectivity strategy, it is that INMSS-2026 has identified the direction of maritime competition with remarkable clarity. The contest for influence in the eastern Indian Ocean is no longer defined solely by fleets or freedom of navigation. It is increasingly shaped by the resilience of supply chains, control of logistics corridors, commercial infrastructure, maritime partnerships and the ability to sustain a presence across strategically important waters. China’s growing emphasis on the Bay of Bengal reinforces — not contradicts — the assumptions underlying India’s maritime doctrine. The challenge for New Delhi is now about executing the strategy. Great Nicobar, the Andaman and Nicobar Command, Sabang, stronger maritime partnerships with Indonesia and other Indo-Pacific partners, enhanced maritime domain awareness and resilient port infrastructure are no longer isolated initiatives. They form the interconnected pillars of a maritime strategy that increasingly appears calibrated to the strategic geography now emerging across the Bay of Bengal. Vivek Y Kelkar is a researcher and analyst focused on the intersection of geoeconomics, geopolitics and corporate strategy.