China's overseas basing ambitions really have the potential to alter the balance
of power in the world through lots of on the ground and logistics issues and
so people really are watching very very carefully.
China set up its first overseas military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa in 2017 because it
feels that as a rising power, the second largest economy in the world, it has overseas interests
to protect. When the spokespersons in China, the foreign ministry for example, are asked
about this they tend to deflect or deny that the People's Liberation Army is interested in overseas
basing. But the fact that they began in Djibouti with low-key economic moves and that then moved
into a logistics facility and is now absolutely a full-blown military base with thousands of
Chinese Marines on the ground and hardened bunker facilities makes it very clear that that there is
at least the intention building of having an overseas presence. Having overseas military
bases for the People's Liberation Army is important for them because this way they can
have a military presence and protect overseas economic interests, but also have a profile
and power projection that makes life easier for China overseas, if you like. In the South Pacific
there's a very interesting example of Solomon Islands where there's a strong relationship
between Solomon Islands and China and in April signed a security agreement which the contents
of which have never been published. In there it gives the People's Liberation Army Navy the right
to under certain circumstances to dock in Solomon Islands, also to import some military equipment
and on the ground reports say that there are now Chinese police patrolling in Solomon Islands,
in the capital, which and there's been political unrest there which is linked to China's presence.
So what we see with China is a different way of building a base, if you like. It starts small,
it's incremental. It starts perhaps with an investment zone and then adds a logistics facility
and then it adds a security deal. This is a very typical step-by-step way of building a base which
is very different from how the U.S. did it all those years ago after World War II. China wasn't
really around as a player it had a civil war going on it was weak and the U.S. to set up bases from
the get-go from scratch as military bases while China's a new arrival can't do that. So it's
coming out with some very innovative and usually hidden methods of extending its own overseas
military capability possibly through bases as well. Outside of the South Pacific in fact the
issue of China and military bases overseas is a global issue. China's really building up a
potential basing presence in most continents. The U.S. is watching especially carefully of course
because it feels quite challenged by China at this point. The Department of Defense recently issued
a report predicting that the next overseas base will be at Ream in Cambodia, another possibility
is Gwadar in Pakistan and a think tank called Rand also issued a report predicting the four
most likely candidates will be also in Cambodia, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh and in Myanmar.
We're talking here about the balance of international power. Why that's extremely
important is of course that the international order as we have it which is anchored in the
United Nations, is expressed in things like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all kinds
of treaties, courts, accepted ways of behavior, diplomatic norms. If China is trying to shift that
arrangement, change that balance through military presence, through calling for different system of
international governance, which it is because China has its own vision which is something
called a common destiny of humankind, it's very vague, then we all have a kind of a challenge if
you like facing us going ahead into the future because what is the world going to look like?