China's rapid naval build-up has stirred fears among neighbours of a future territorial grab.
For sure, Indonesia, like its neighbors, wants Chinese investment but also wants to counter China's high-profile naval build-up.
If not, Asia's cautious naval build-up could indeed mutate into a classic, old-fashioned arms race.
Yet at the same time, the Republic of Korea's large army stays alert, and its naval build-up continues.
What India sees as a prudent defensive response to China's naval build-up might easily be taken by Pakistan as aggressive.
What it portrayed as a defensive naval build-up appeared aggressive to other countries, and it was suspicious of its international rivals.
In a recent report, Japan's national institute for defence studies warned that China's naval build-up presented a challenge to the country's security (pdf).
In a recent speech in Washington, DC, Singapore's patriarch, Lee Kuan Yew, surprised his audience by raising concerns about China's naval build-up, something South-East Asia's leaders rarely talk about in public.
A recent publication ("Co-operation from Strength") from the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS), an American think-tank, uses the sea to argue for an American naval build-up.
As the Americans continue their biggest naval build-up in the Gulf since the start of the Iraq war four years ago, a transatlantic rift is opening up on several important aspects of the Iran dispute.
It has also called on China, in an unusually public fashion, to be more accommodating over contested areas of the South China Sea where America and India share concerns about a Chinese naval build-up, including the construction of a nuclear-submarine base on the Chinese island of Hainan.
