Chinese can simply set up hundreds of dummy companies in South Korea, Japan, Thailand, etc, buying oil from Arab or Africa. All the paperwork and certification will show the destination of these ships to third country. They can reloaded their cargo on the ship to China in the third countries, or simply instruct these ships to change the destination since they just sell their cargo to a new buyer who happens to be Chinese.
That is a lovely plan.
1. Forcing unarmed and harmless civilian ships to stop at a port from international sea? You definitely need the permission from Americans.
2. Each ship is working on the clock, any delay on their journey will cost them a fortune. Any failure to reach the destination in time will impose huge amount of penalty on their owner. Now the question is: is Indian government going to compensate that?
1. No. Chinese companies cannot use dummy companies in South Korea, Japan, etc. These countries have good ties with India and an arrangement will ensure that dummy companies attempting to bypass an Indian blockade do not use their soil.
2. Which country is going to sit by idle as they see the two most powerful countries in Asia go to war? They are definitely not going to sit and watch their shipping passing through the Malacca war-zone. They'll either re-route or else go through whatever procedure India sets up to ensure the safe passage of THEIR cargo ships.
3. Intelligence sharing arrangements with countries like Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, Korea, etc will help our intelligence figure out which ships are actually headed for their shores and which ones are Chinese ships masquerading as another ship.
4. NOT ALL ships will have to make a special stop at security check going through Malacca. Many of the 250 ships passing through Malacca daily make a stop at or originate from India. We can do the security checks at these respective ports in India without these ships having to waste money and time going through a security check in Nicobar.
5. Its not going to be a zero-sum game. A blockade like this is never a 100% success. But it surely can and will figure in the Strategic calculus in both Beijing and New Delhi.
I am tired of people assuming world trade is going to be unaffected by a China-India war. Trust me when I say this, the day that we will have to ACTUALLY BLOCK Malacca, China and India will not be the only ones at war. Global trade and economies will be in recession and specific trades (such as Japan-China, India-China, India-Vietnam, etc) are going to take a HUGE hit. And here we are with
@no smoking talking about U.S. or Japan being mad about some small inconvenience to trade ships. Sure we all like to talk about a war between great powers, very few of us actually realise what it really means for Mankind. And no, I am not talking about a Nuclear apocalypse. Even without nukes, if countries as big as ours ever go to total war, the planet and especially us can say goodbye to all our progress since the 1950s. Thank god our leaders understand that threat and work towards non-military means to keep things tranquil.
Best case scenario, India-China go on hating each other for the boundary dispute and build up their militaries to a standard that assures M.A.D. without nukes; while at the same time ensuring greater people-people interface to bring down national sentiments of hostility towards one-another.
The above is a "Best-case scenario" meaning, its too good to be true. What is highly probable between our two countries, is a limited-conflict on the borders. That will happen once we are done with our internal problems and economic growth agendas.
