Last week, the well-attended Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, a session on emerging geometries in the Indo-Pacific, saw assembled the Indian and French navy chiefs, the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, chief of the joint staff of Japan's Self-Defence Forces and the Australian Defence Force chief.

Except for a rare question or two on Japan's military build-up and posture - principally by this writer and addressed to Japan's Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano - the talk was overwhelmingly China, China, China.