By James R. Holmes
This week the not-so-unexpected news broke that Overseas Port Holdings Ltd., a Chinese state-run enterprise, has taken over management of the western Pakistani seaport of Gwadar from the Singaporean firm PSA International. The transfer of the container port facility — whose development Beijing has bankrolled over the past decade — has been in the works for some years now. It comes as little shock.
Still, Indian officialdom voiced concern about a Chinese presence along the subcontinent's western flank. Suitably improved, a container port can accommodate men-of-war. Accordingly, many in New Delhi fret over the prospect of a "string of pearls," a network of Chinese naval bases encircling India from the sea and cramping the nation's maritime aspirations.
A sort of cascade effect is at work in the Indo-Pacific. In the Western Pacific, China worries about being encircled; in South Asia, China is the power seen as intent on doing the encircling. In the Western Pacific, China is the rising naval challenger facing off against a seagoing hegemon, America; in South Asia, China looks to Indian eyes like the seagoing hegemon of the future. It's hardly surprising, consequently, that a hypothetical network of Chinese bases triggers some of the same reflexes in New Delhi that longstanding American primacy triggers in East Asia.
Read the full story at The Diplomat