string of pearls
n.— «The second event has been much quieter but has more ominous implications, Beijing’s steady expansion of its “string of pearls” strategy. A new phrase coined by geo-strategists’ for Chinese efforts to increase access to global ports and airfields and to develop special diplomatic relationships from the South China Sea to the Arabian Gulf. The most recent and perhaps the most significant “pearl’ emerged earlier this year as China helped Pakistan complete Phase II of the expansion plans for their mammoth deep sea port at Gwadar.» —“Letter from New Delhi” by Atul Dev Mauritius Times May 25, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...