Europe and China in the Western Indian Ocean: Shared Waters, Distinct Courses

Source: Italian Navy

Commentary by Alec CARUANA, Non-resident Research Associate,

December 16, 2025

Rising maritime insecurity in the Indian Ocean exposes Europe’s trade vulnerabilities and declining US commitment. While Europe relies on fragmented multilateral tools, China pursues a strategic, well-resourced presence. Despite differences, both share interests in secure sea lanes and sustainable maritime development, creating scope for pragmatic cooperation.

Evoluated Economic Security: from reactive to proactive

Earlier this spring, the Houthi Movement in Yemen’s escalation of attacks on commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea drew global attention to the wider maritime environment of the Western Indian Ocean. While these raids drew concern across the world over their impact on global supply chains, Washington’s intervention provoked unease in European capitals for more profound reasons. In the course of U.S. deliberations over a potential military response, a private Signal chat between senior Trump administration officials was leaked, revealing candid assessments of Europe’s dependencies on Indian Ocean trade routes: “I just hate bailing Europe out again.” Vice-President JD Vance wrote, with his colleague in the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth responding, “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It’s pathetic.”

As 2025 draws to a close, while the regional security environment has shifted significantly, Europe’s trade with Asia remains vulnerable. Washington’s ostensible neutering of Iran’s nuclear threat and success in brokering a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has contributed to a relative reduction in regional military tensions in key marginal seas to the Indian Ocean—namely the Red Sea and the Gulf of Hormuz. However, piracy and other forms of maritime insecurity continue to disrupt shipping and will continue to pose challenges to consumers and policymakers across Europe and Asia. With American commitment to securing these arteries demonstrably vacillating and the transatlantic cooperation over Indian Ocean maritime affairs weakening, exploring how interests align across east-west lines and what potential could come through enhanced cooperation is certainly warranted.

Europe’s Interests in the Indian Ocean

For most of Europe, the Indian Ocean is not a far-flung or abstract theatre—the Suez Canal has made the sea significantly interdependent with the Mediterranean, with over one-third of the EU’s external trade passing through its sea lanes. These vital maritime shipping lanes connect Europe to energy suppliers in the Persian Gulf, manufacturing hubs in East Africa and South Asia, and consumer markets in Europe. Nevertheless, Europe’s substantive maritime engagement remains relatively piecemeal. For the traditional ‘heavy-hitters’ in Europe’s security apparatus, the region features in their broader Indo-Pacific strategic calculus. France stands out as the only EU member-state with permanent territories and forces in the region—Réunion, Mayotte, and a non-trivial military presence in Djibouti giving Paris both the means and the incentive to pursue an active regional policy. Across the English Channel, moves by the UK government to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius suggests a potential deemphasis of the Indian Ocean in this government in London’s long-term maritime strategy.

For most other European states, lacking such forward-deployed assets or national contingents, they contribute to regional efforts primarily through multilateral frameworks to promote supply chain security rather than independent deployments. The EU’s flagship presence is ‘Operation Atalanta,’ (formerly known as EUNAVFOR Somalia) launched in 2008 to counter piracy off the Horn of Africa. The mission, still active today, now focuses on maritime awareness, regional capacity-building, and escorting humanitarian shipments. Alongside Atalanta, the EU also launched ‘Operation Aspides’ in 2024 with a mandate specifically to defend against Houthi attacks against European-flagged commercial vessels. Nevertheless, coordination beyond surface level security efforts often remains a challenge. Given the aforementioned asymmetries in member-states’ regional presence, they often approach the Indian Ocean through distinct lenses rather than as a unified strategic space. For example, Italy’s engagements with Mozambique are driven largely by energy interdependencies, while French and Portuguese military ties with this nation also center on threats of insurgency spilling over into EU overseas territories and surrounding seas. This fragmentation stands in contrast to the coherence of China’s regional approach.

The Chinese Approach

The Indian Ocean has also become indispensable for Beijing. About 80 percent of Chinese oil imports flow through its waters, largely via the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca. The region is also the maritime spine of the Belt and Road Initiative—also known in-part as the ‘Maritime Silk Road’ concept—connecting ports across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Over the last decade, China has financed and built a series of mega port and infrastructure projects, from Hambantota in Sri Lanka to Lamu in Kenya to Bagamoyo in Tanzania. The logic behind such investments is both commercial and strategic. They secure logistics routes for Chinese trade while deepening political relationships with host countries.

Meanwhile, China's military footprint has expanded in tandem. Since 2008, the People's Liberation Army Navy has deployed over forty task forces for anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden, making it a consistent actor in regional maritime security. In 2017, Beijing opened its first overseas military base, in Djibouti, to serve as a logistical hub for those patrols and allow long- range operations, while also serving as a platform for Chinese power projection and naval experimentation. Taken together, these elements provide what some analysts in the past decade have termed China's “string of pearls”: a network of commercial and quasi-military assets that runs from the South China Sea through the western Indian Ocean.

While the contrast is not an absolute one, it is clear that Europe and China approach the Indian Ocean with slightly different priorities, methods and intensity. Largely lacking independent capacity to project power, European states’ regional engagements mainly depend on multilateral frameworks, normative commitments, and partnerships with regional actors. In fact, the majority of EU members states’ military deployments (such as the aforementioned EUNAVFOR) overlap with those of other countries through the Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and occur at the behest of local countries; direct and unilateral actions by European armed forces (such as France’s counterinsurgency operation in the Sahel) are few and far betweeen. This tends to stall decision-making, reducing operational flexibility and substantive impact. By contrast, China prioritizes strategic resilience and presence in key maritime nodes through infrastructure development and naval presence, thereby enabling rapid, unilateral responses to potential disruptions.

Areas of Potential Alignment

Despite these differences, Europe and China share certain pragmatic interests. Both depend on the uninterrupted flow of commerce through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the wider Indian Ocean. Both have experienced disruptions caused by piracy, terrorism, and, more recently, drone and missile attacks by the Houthis. Throughout the recent Red Sea crisis, Chinese and European shipping companies faced similar risks, prompting their respective navies to participate in convoy and escort operations coordinated via existing anti-piracy security architecture created in the 2000s. Both polities have also issued public statements emphasising the need to preserve navigation rights under international law despite regional insecurity—take, for example, the mirrored EU and Chinese responses to Houthi attacks on European vessels in July.

Another potential point of convergence is sustainable maritime development. The EU’s Global Gateway Initiative and several projects funded under China’s aforementioned Maritime Silk Road framework both place an emphasis on sustainable infrastructure and economic capacity- building among coastal states along the Indian Ocean’s rim. Both polities have been seeking partnerships with East African countries—in fact, efforts overlap in Mozambique where European and Chinese policy banks have both deployed large-scale investments under the Global Gateway and BRI umbrellas to develop economic corridors linking ports to inland areas. Though means differ—EU actors largely through grants and regulatory standards, and China largely through concessional loans and construction contracts—goals and targets overlap significantly. Expanding cooperation into fields such as green port development or marine environmental impact presents low-hanging fruit to both sides, provided trust can be built consistently.

With Europe’s capacity to project power in the region independently likely to remain limited, the Western Indian Ocean will likely remain a space where Europe and China are compelled to coexist rather than compete outright. Both depend on its sea lanes, both seek predictability, and both face the same volatility at its chokepoints. The difference lies in method and intent: China’s approach is strategic, centralized, and well-resourced, while Europe’s remains ambivalent, diffuse, and constrained by relative power deficiencies. Bridging that gap will require more than rhetoric about a “rules-based order.” It must start with sustained investment from both sides in developing a maritime trading economy with high-quality standards (for example, in energy efficiency, sustainability, and local inclusion) that capitalize on slackening standards and reduced enthusiasm from other global actors for development finance. Europe must also work towards bringing about greater policy coherence between EU institutions, its member-states, and Trans- Atlantic security architectures. Most importantly perhaps, the EU and China must continue to demonstrate a readiness to mutually engage where interests overlap in the maritime space without forfeiting their ability to secure economic returns and sustain growth at home.