This Indian wet dream of choking China by choking the Malacca Strait would be a massive geopolitical blunder for India. No one can effectively track every single ship if its heading to China. Even if India could, many of these ships could still be making stopovers at many countries other than China. You know, all modern shipping fleets practice multiple stop-points to maximize the productivity of each voyage.
If India truly wants to choke China's shipping in the Malacca Straits, then it'll also be choking trade for many other countries. This is effectively a declaration of war on countries reliant on the Malacca Straits. The biggest losers aside from China from this blockade are: Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and maybe The Philippines. Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand (maybe also Vietnam) would be forced into allying with China to battle the Indian Navy and re-open the Malacca Straits. We haven't even talk about the Gulf states and Iran who would be fuming as their oil exports to their biggest customers in Asia gets disrupted. Pakistan can surely capitalize on the united anger of the Muslim world on this Indian stupidity. As if India hasn't angered them enough already.
If the naval conflict drags on, the Malacca Straits will be closed. Global trade will be severely disrupted. Ships travelling between Europe and Asia will have to take longer routes. Shipping costs would skyrocket. Oil prices will shoot up. Then "India's friends" like South Korea, Japan, and EU will all feel the pain. All for what? For India to have the satisfaction of choking China? Good job! Because it can only help to advance China's alliance building initiative. The cynical part of me feels that India doing this is probably a good thing. It'll surely help India to displace China as Public Enemy no.1. And allow China and many other angry nations to gang-bang on India.
Exactly! A lot of times, people are talking about things they don't really understand.
The US navy is infinitely more powerful and capable than the Indian navy. But even the USA is afraid and deeply concerned about China building islands in SCS. This is because the so-called "choke the Malacca Strait" is not something that can be easily and effectively done in a control manner by naval forces.
Because China doesn't need to control SCS and Malacca straight to protect her strategic interest. All China needs to do in retaliation is to elevate the tension in the region, and all trade through that straight will be deeply affected. This means that many other countries: Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, etc that deeply depend on the straight will be much badly hurt than China. And the US financial market is deeply tied to the global trade and manufacturing supply chain that has important nodes in these countries.
In fact, I would say that no only is Malacca Straight NOT a weak point for China.
It is literally one of the two balls of the Globalized world order and the US financial market, and this ball is in the grasp of China's hand. All she needs to do is to squeeze it a little bit, and the world will shriek. I would even go as far to say that it would be in China's greatest strategic interest to gain the capability to UPSET the establish order here (and to create chaos and conflict in this area). Yet, the majority of people thought that an escalation beyond boiling point in the Malacca Straight is bad only for China.
If you look at relative advantage and interest, once the Malacca Straight and the SCS became chaotic conflict zone and loses peace and order, China would be biggest winner as long as the world is still globalized. Because this will mean that the cost of maritime trade/transportation-of-goods through SCS will skyrocket. This will greatly diminish (if not totally erase) the relative cost advantage maritime trade/transportation-of-goods over land trade/transportation-of-goods.
This, I believe, is also why China's 21 century silk-road endeavors is materialized as the "belt and road initiative". This initiative actually contain an ambitious over-land trade route that the West will find disconcerting. Because the West only think in terms of a world that remains in its current state of being, so the do their calculation purely on cost numbers on the current market.
But please, use your imagination, once a stupid actor in the region decides to escalate SCS against China, and China inevitably retaliates, what would happen? lol
This will happen: this huge maritime trade route (which is this one through SCS) will collapse, and China's over-land transportation infrastructure and OBOR will provide the only alternative. This is why the US is so afraid of PLA's build up in SCS.
