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China’s Naval Plans For Djibouti: A Road, A Belt, Or A String Of Pearls?

China’s Naval Plans For Djibouti: A Road, A Belt, Or A String Of Pearls?

From TheDiplomat. Story by Rob Edens.

Last autumn, a Namibian newspaper leaked a story that sent ripples across the world.

In a November article, the Namibian Times presented an unofficial Chinese report outlining steps for the building of 18 military naval bases (including one in Namibia, at Walvis Bay).

In addition, Chinese ambitions extended to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar in the Northern Indian Ocean; Djibouti, Yemen, Oman, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique in the Western Indian Ocean; and Seychelles and Madagascar in the Central South Indian Ocean. These bases together would frame China’s three strategic lines for “maintaining the safety of international maritime routes” and, ultimately “world stability.”

Although the People’s Liberation Army Navy blasted the report as “utterly groundless,” Djibouti’s strongman Ismail Omar Guelleh recently acknowledged that his country is indeed holding high-level talks with Beijing for a Chinese naval military base in the northern port of Obock.

Is this the first sign that China is serious about developing a blue water navy capable of acting outside its immediate sphere of influence? Is “China’s peaceful rise” starting to show its claws?

Much ado has been made of Xi Jinping’s Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road initiative (jointly known as “one belt and one road”), a $140-billion plan meant to expand China’s global reach. Best understood as a circle that originates on China’s East coast and spans South Asia and the Middle East, climbing to Europe via East Africa and the Suez canal, on one side, before returning to its original point via Russia and Central Asia, on the other, the project is an integral part of Xi’s “China Dream” of national rejuvenation.

Beijing went to considerable pains to frame the Modern Silk Road merely as an economic plan of global proportions that will impact 4.4 billion people and facilitate a jaw dropping $2.5 trillion in commerce over a decade.

…But as Djibouti’s recent announcement so pointedly showed, Beijing’s narrative of solely pursuing a strategy of economic diplomacy is perhaps tinted with geopolitical flavors after all.
Reacting to the news, military analyst Lesley Anne Warner said, “I don’t want to use the word alarming, but what’s happening is a departure from China’s role in Africa, which has until now been primarily economically focused.”

Read more at TheDiplomat.