News Analysis Fifteen years ago, it was fashionable to speak of China’s emerging “string of pearls”: a chain of bases, ports, and other maritime facilities stretching from the South China Sea, through the Singapore-Malacca Straits, across the Indian Ocean, and on to the Red Sea. If not directly owned or controlled by China, this network-of-access would permit the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the naval arm of the Chinese military, to become a more or less permanent presence in the Indian Ocean. As a result, the PLAN could secure China’s access to some of its most important sea lanes of communication (SLOCs), safeguarding the critical flow of energy supplies—particularly crude oil—from the Middle East, and protecting China’s trade routes to Europe. Until quite recently, however, there was no such “string of pearls.” Indeed, to many, the whole idea was a flight of Western imagination. It has gotten a lot less …