China’s Strait of Malacca Dilemma: Beijing’s Dual Strategy to Secure Energy and Challenge US Naval Influence

The geopolitical “Malacca dilemma” is at the core of this study, which examines China’s “dual-axis strategy” to address this challenge and its regional implications. The problem of the study centers on China’s strategy of diversifying logistical routes and enhancing maritime capacity, affecting international alliances’ counter-reactions in the Indian Ocean due to intensified competition for influence. Further, the study, based on descriptive and analytical approaches, showed that China’s strategy represents a profound geopolitical shift towards building a “flexible naval shield” in order to weaken American influence in the Indian Ocean, but this expansion has fueled a regional arms race. Accordingly, the study concludes that the solution lies in the need for China to balance deterrence requirements with activating regional cooperation mechanisms to ensure the stability of vital waterways.