India, April 23 -- Every year, on April 23, China's People's Liberation Army Navy marks its founding day. And like most such occasions, it comes with a show-warships gleaming in formation, sailors standing at crisp attention, aircraft carriers cutting through calm waters as they own them. Which, increasingly, Beijing believes they do.

The celebrations are impressive, no question. But spend a little time looking past the pageantry, and a very different picture begins to emerge.

On the surface, Navy Day looks like any other national commemoration. Flags, drills, carefully rehearsed displays of military hardware. State media calls the fleet a "great wall of steel" and wraps the whole thing in the language of sovereignty and peaceful develo...