France and India signed an accord Saturday aimed at stepping up military cooperation in the Indian Ocean where China is a regional power while also securing commercial contracts worth €13 billion, reports FRANCE 24.
Under the deal signed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Emmanuel Macron, each country will open its naval bases to warships from the other.
They also signed an agreement to expedite construction of a big nuclear power plant in India by a French company and highlighted a solar alliance and cooperation between the two countries in the fields of defense, security, technology, space and counterterrorism.
China's mighty strategic shadow hangs over the accord, however, with the country's territorial ambitions in the South China Sea already worrying world powers. Heightening that concern is China's move into the vast Indian Ocean -- stretching from the Suez Canal to the Malacca Strait.
Modi and Macron are particularly anxious as China extended its military presence by opening a naval base in the eastern African nation of Djibouti last year.
Beijing is also building up its trading network -- the so-called One Belt One Road initiative -- which involves many of the Asian and African nations that line the Indian Ocean.
It has built a port in Pakistan's Gwadar, taken a 99-year-lease on Sri Lanka's Hambantota and bought a number of tiny islands in the Maldives.
All of this has alarmed India, which sits at the heart of the Indian Ocean region.
New Delhi experts see Chinese companies investing in assets ranging from airports to the Bangladesh stock exchange as Beijing's trojan horses.