CHINA’S MARITIME CHALLENGE

It’s December 2025 and ‘Exercise Sea Dragon’ has begun. The world’s largest navy has bided its time for decades and is now ready to project power beyond its shores. Two PLAN (People’s Liberation Army-Navy) aircraft carrier battle groups, the Shandong and Fujian, with their entourage of nuclear-powered attack submarines, cruisers and destroyers, enter the Indian Ocean through the Malacca Straits, shadowed by Indian P-8I reconnaissance aircraft. ‘Sea Dragon’ is meant to test PLAN’s responsiveness to maritime operations against a distant adversary, the official release says. Four Shang class submarines circle the east and west coast of India—two on either coast conducting ‘barrier patrols’—leaving no doubt as to who this distant adversary is. In Delhi, the Maritime Domain Awareness panels in the navy’s maritime operations room paint a picture of the PLAN mission—an