- UDA holds immense strategic significance, encompassing undersea cables, a vast range of rich mineral resources, advanced submarine operations, and sophisticated information-sharing capabilities.
- China has emerged as a frontrunner, steadily expanding its capabilities and asserting influence in the UDA, through a variety of unmanned and manned naval operations.
- China currently owns around 59 submarines, and according to reports by the NTI, it is expected to grow its fleet to 65.
- The United States of America and India have already started to intensify their cooperation in the UDA Technologies.
The Indo-Pacific region is more than just a geographical territory or a diplomatic alliance, it is the epitome of 21st-century strategic rivalry. While countries continue to assert their maritime influence through surface-level naval operations, enhancing their domain awareness through cooperation, and port development, one crucial horizon remains often overlooked in the discourse of this strategic space: the underwater domain. This submerged landscape, hidden beneath the waves, holds immense strategic significance, encompassing undersea cables, a vast range of rich mineral resources, advanced submarine operations, and sophisticated information-sharing capabilities. Among various regional powers, China has emerged as a frontrunner, steadily expanding its capabilities and asserting influence in this invisible battlefield beneath the sea through a variety of unmanned and manned naval operations, underwater warfare, hypersonic warfare equipment, sea infrastructure, sending comprehensive scientific research ships for deep sea global exploration especially in the colder seas, and additionally to keep surveillance of submarines of the US, Japan, and other nations, deployed to monitor the Chinese themselves.
Introduction
When discussing China, we often associate the word ‘expansionist’ with its territorial ambitions in the changing global dynamics. However, it is equally significant that while analyzing a nation’s strategic missions, one must look through the lens of its history in establishing its reign of nauticalism. As early as the 13th and 14th centuries, historians recount Chinese civilizations and dynasties using robust materials and advanced techniques, producing ships and seafaring vessels, which resulted in the flourishing of Quangzhou in the Yang dynasty, home to a sturdy fleet of seafaring vessels.
It is geopolitically significant to note China’s history of strategic expansion or influence in this domain from its early seafaring legacy to its extended underwater narrative to establish an underwater data center, bringing advanced AI supporting technologies and systems into the picture.
“The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) of China, which is responsible for overseeing the nation’s maritime security, also handles its undersea strategic operations and developments in underwater warfare such as submarines, torpedoes, mines, as well as Sound Navigation and Ranging system technologies which detects submarines and other underwater threats emerging using sound wave radiations. It currently owns around 59 submarines, and according to reports by the NTI, it is expected to grow its fleet to 65.
Current Developments
Recently, beneath the waves, a new frontier in data technologies has emerged with China unveiling the world’s first operational underwater AI data center, making a yet again historic leap in the consolidation of data infrastructure and emerging technological systems. As information warfare shapes modern geopolitics, China’s early advantage places it ahead in a competition most Indo-Pacific nations have yet to enter.
Additionally, the region has also expanded its technologies to great lengths, such as successfully building a supersonic missile, being boron-powered, working as an anti-submarine missile, with capabilities to travel faster than a torpedo. According to the South China Morning Post, such missiles would be able to perfectly change course at will or crash dive in order to evade underwater defence systems without losing momentum.
Conclusion
Like the dragon it embodies, China has surged beneath the oceans, expanding silently and strategically with precision and purpose, much unlike the Indo-Pacific countries, which remain adrift, yet to even anchor their ambitions in the underwater realm.
Although, at the same time the talks of the maritime domain awareness, especially this domain, in the QUAD i.e. the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, consisting of India, Japan, Australia and the United States, emerging as an outcome of the nation’s great growing influencing also acting as a wakeup call in this imbalanced strategic space.
While it seems like a strategic win for India, which in many ways it is, the nation must realize that it needs to act swiftly and decisively, building robust UDA technologies, if it hopes to keep pace with its formidable neighbour. Such are the consequences one has to go through having a dragon that truly never sleeps, as their neighboring nation, as it looms beneath and beyond the surface.
References
- China’s ocean expansion
- Chinas underwater initiatives and seabed exploration aspirations
- China’s growing capability in underwater warfare implications for the indo pacific
- China’s first underwater ai data center and the rise of subsea computing
- China’s subsea data centre could power
- China begins building underwater data centre
- China to display unmanned, intelligent, underwater, hypersonic at upcoming military parade
- Exposed undersea pla navy officer reflections on chinas not so silent service
Cristee Arora
About Author
Cristee is a second-year political science student and a research intern at the Indo-Pacific Studies Center. She is also a member of Global Youth and the Indian Foreign Policy Project and has previously worked in policy analysis under the Union Ministry of Culture, Government of India. Further, Cristee is currently working as an impact officer at ASEAN Youth Organization India and has also been a delegate to the Harvard Conference of Asian and International Relations 2024 and the World Bank Group Youth Summit 2025. Her articles range from the maritime issues in the Indo-Pacific to the tensions and the nuclear history in the Middle East.