While the Chinese Navy is already in India’s backyard, New Delhi is not far behind

Indian naval analysts distinguish China's numerical strength and its operational experience in these waters. China's Navy now fields more warships in total than the United States Navy — Pentagon assessments put the PLA Navy's fleet at well over 350 hulls, against a smaller and shrinking US Navy — and it is building submarines, destroyers, and support vessels at a pace India's shipyards cannot match hull for hull.

New Delhi: China’s naval footprint in the Indian Ocean Region has expanded from occasional deployments to standing infrastructure, a shift Indian naval planners now treat as the central variable in the country’s own shipbuilding decisions. The PLA Navy maintains a base in Djibouti, has built port access arrangements from East Africa to Pakistan’s Gwadar, and is bringing its third aircraft carrier, Fujian, toward full operational capability during 2026.

The Djibouti facility remains the clearest marker of intent. Commissioned in 2017 as China’s first overseas military base, it has since been fitted with a jetty roughly 330 metres long, built to specifications........

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