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David Brewster, RCD/The Conversation: China’s Play for Military Bases in the Eastern Indian Ocean
China is moving to establish a network of naval and air bases in the Indian Ocean to support its growing strategic imperatives in the region. This likely includes plans to build bases in the eastern Indian Ocean, in waters much closer to Australia. Australia cannot afford to play onlooker to these developments.
In July 2017, China opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti, and Beijing is currently in negotiations with Pakistan to establish an additional base at or near Gwadar on the Arabian Sea.
But it will not be enough for China to only have capabilities in the north-west Indian Ocean, far from Australia. China’s strategic imperatives, and the Indian Ocean’s distance from Chinese territory, mean that Beijing will likely see a need to develop a network of military facilities of various types across the ocean, including in its central/eastern zone.
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WNU Editor: The countries that may provide these bases to China are .... Pakistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. And if China gets these bases .... the U.S. military presence at Diego Garcia will be in the cross-hairs.
What is the strategic sense of that? Having a world logistic ability as the US have? No country have the equivalent of the US since WWII, and for good reasons: first the cost is giant, it took decades for making it, and the "logistic mind" is typically American. The Chinese communist bureaucracy state of mind will only make "frozen like" bases.
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