Strait of Malacca
AIS observation, distinct from the structural share above. Meaning comes from the gap between the two.
The link between the Indian and Pacific oceans. ≈45% of seaborne crude and the energy supply of China, Japan and Korea transit this corridor.
The Malacca dilemma
In 2003, President Hu Jintao is said to have coined the phrase "Malacca dilemma" to name China's strategic anxiety: most of the Gulf and African oil bound for Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul funnels into a channel less than three kilometers wide at its narrowest point, the Phillips Channel off Singapore. There, dense traffic, shoals and a capped draft, which defines the "Malaccamax" class of supertankers, all pile up.
The vulnerability is also asymmetric: a third-party navy controlling the entrance to the strait would hold the energy tap of three major economies. It is this calculus, more than a risk of accident, that structures the region's naval posture and China's race for backup routes.
Alternatives that fall short
On the map, three escape routes exist; none holds up at scale. The Sunda and Lombok straits, deeper, add more than 1,500 kilometers of route and remain under Indonesian sovereignty. The China–Myanmar pipeline at Kyaukpyu, operational since 2017, drains only about 440,000 barrels a day, less than 3 % of the needs it is supposed to secure. As for the Kra canal across the Thai isthmus, discussed since the seventeenth century, it has never been dug.
The result is a passage point with no real substitute: what transits through Malacca can, if it closes, be only imperfectly and slowly redistributed. The redundancy displayed on maps does not survive the test of volumes.