Among China's latest moves is the billion-dollar port its engineers are building in Sri Lanka, an island country just off India's southern coast.

The Chinese insist the Hambantota port is a purely commercial move, and by all appearances, it is. But some in India see ominous designs behind the project, while others in countries surrounding India like the idea.

A 2004 Pentagon report called Beijing’s effort to expand its presence in the region China’s “string of pearls”. No one wants war, and relations between the two nations are now at their closest. Still, the Indians worry about China's growing influence.

“Each pearl in the string is a link in a chain of the Chinese maritime presence,” India’s navy chief, Adm. Sureesh Mehta, said in a speech in January, expressing concern that naval forces operating out of ports established by the Chinese could “take control over the world energy jugular”.

But Zhao Gancheng, a South Asia expert at the Chinese government-backed Shanghai Institute for International Studies, says ports like Hambantota are strictly commercial ventures. And Sri Lanka says the new port will be a windfall for its impoverished southern region.