---
title: "String of Pearls: China's Indian Ocean Strategy"
description: "The String of Pearls is China's chain of ports and bases ringing India across the Indian Ocean. See why analysts distinguish it from Sagarmala and the BRI."
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/glossary/sagar-mala-vs-string-of-pearls"
---

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Model Diplomat Research Team · Last reviewed June 22, 2026

TL;DR

- The String of Pearls is a geostrategic theory describing China's network of commercial and military facilities across the Indian Ocean encircling India along sea lanes to the Persian Gulf.
- Is the String of Pearls an official Chinese policy?
- How does the String of Pearls differ from Sagarmala?
- What is India's response to the String of Pearls?
- Which ports are most commonly cited as pearls?

[Civil Service & Diplomatic Exams](https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/civil-services/glossary)Updated June 22, 2026

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## Positions at a glance

### Supporters

The mechanics of the theory rest on the logic of the so-called Malacca Dilemma, a phrase attributed to President Hu Jintao around 2003, denoting China's anxiety that a hostile power—principally the United States or India—could interdict Chinese shipping at the Malacca chokepoint. To diversify and protect these flows, China pursues a layered approach: it secures long-term commercial leases and equity stakes in foreign ports, finances harbour and pipeline infrastructure through state policy banks, and over time positions assets capable of supporting naval logistics—replenishment, repair, and intelligence collection. Each "pearl" is a node; the "string" is the cumulative arc from the South China Sea through the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The strategy is incremental and ostensibly commercial, which complicates attribution of military intent.

### Opponents

Controversy attends both the descriptive accuracy and the policy utility of the concept. Critics, including some PLA-watchers and economists, argue the String of Pearls overstates coherence, imputing a master plan to what are often independent commercial transactions, and that the debt-trap reading of Hambantota has been empirically contested. Chinese officials reject the term as a Cold War caricature. Yet developments since 2017—the Djibouti base, China's first overseas naval evacuation operations, and reports of a possible facility at Ream in Cambodia, which the U.S. State Department flagged from 2021 onward—have lent the framework renewed credibility among defence planners. The 2020 Galwan clash and the Quad's revitalisation further hardened Indian readings of maritime encirclement.

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In August 2017, China's People's Liberation Army Navy commissioned its first overseas military base in Djibouti, the most concrete node Indian strategists cite as evidence of the String of Pearls encircling the Indian Ocean.

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