Jeremy Page
Aug. 19, 2016
DORALEH, Djibouti—It was February this year when camel drivers first spotted the Chinese troops staking out a patch of coastal scrubland about 8 miles from the largest U.S. military base in Africa.
Chinese navy ships had visited this tiny East African nation before. They sometimes picked up supplies in the old French port, farther down the arid coast, during antipiracy patrols off Somalia.
This time, the Chinese military was here to stay. The camel herders watched as the troops secured a plot next to a construction site where a vast new bulk and container port is taking shape.
The 90-acre plot is where Beijing is building its first overseas military outpost—a historic step that marks a bold new phase in its evolution as a world power.
Due for completion next year, the naval outpost is expected to feature weapons stores, ship and helicopter maintenance facilities and possibly a small contingent of Chinese marines or special forces, according to foreign officers and experts monitoring its development. Its cluster of low-rise concrete buildings and shipping containers, some with Chinese flags, offers the most tangible sign yet of China’s strategy to extend its military reach across the Indian Ocean and beyond.
In doing so, China is accelerating its transformation from an isolationist, continental nation to a global maritime power, a move that could challenge Western security partnerships that have underpinned the world order since 1945.
Right now, only a handful of nations have bases beyond their borders. The U.S. has the most, in 42 foreign countries. Britain, France and Russia each have them in about a dozen countries and overseas territories.
While Chinese officials deny plans to build large U.S.-style bases and call the Djibouti outpost a “support facility,” they also talk openly about negotiating more overseas outposts where Chinese interests coalesce.
“Steadily advancing overseas base construction” is one of President Xi Jinping’s foreign-policy priorities, wrote Adm. Sun Jianguo, the deputy chief of the joint staff department and likely future naval chief, in a Communist Party magazine in April.
China’s missile destroyer Jinan entered the port of Salalah, Oman, last year. PHOTO: ZENG TAO/XINHUA/ZUMA WIRE
The Pentagon has predicted China will establish several more outposts in the next decade. One likely spot is Oman’s port of Salalah, where Chinese navy ships often stop for rest and resupply, defense experts say. Other possibilities include the Seychelles and Pakistan’s port of Karachi.
Officials from those countries didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether bases might be built there, nor did China.
Mr. Xi’s rationale is that China needs to protect its expanding interests overseas, including stakes in Middle Eastern oil fields and a growing corps of Chinese expatriates. That also could embellish his image as a strong world leader, even as China’s economy slows.
On the other hand, Beijing risks getting sucked into violent entanglements, much as the U.S. and other powers have. Three Chinese peacekeepers have died in action in Africa since June, including two in nearby South Sudan, where China has oil investments.
While Western nations have encouraged Chinese involvement in peacekeeping and other multilateral missions, a long-term military presence in Djibouti, butting up against U.S. operations, opens a fresh arena of potential friction.
The U.S. in particular worries that sensitive U.S. defense technology would have to be removed if compromised by the kind of Chinese surveillance, including hacking, that has troubled U.S. officials elsewhere.
“China is coming very aggressively into the region,” said one senior Western officer tracking the Chinese activities. “What will be the results? I don’t know. We’re talking about China’s future as a world power.”
The U.S. base in Djibouti, Camp Lemonnier, has about 4,000 troops and is used for Special Forces and drone operations against jihadist groups in the region. It abuts Djibouti’s main airport, and attack helicopters and other U.S. military aircraft are often seen by the runway.
U.S. and French military training taking place near Camp Lemonnier in 2013. PHOTO: SGT CHAD THOMPSON/PLANET PIX/ZUMA WIRE
The U.S. doesn’t want Chinese military aircraft, including drones, flying near its facilities. There is already discomfort that China has provided Djibouti’s air force with a turboprop plane, serviced by Chinese personnel, which U.S. officers say has been seen landing at an airstrip used by U.S. drones. In July, Djibouti’s air force received another two light transport aircraft from China.
“We’re strictly reliant upon the Djiboutian government to make sure that anybody who might be adversarial are separated appropriately,” said Maj. Gen. Kurt Sonntag, commander of U.S. forces in Djibouti.
A Pentagon official wouldn’t comment on Chinese surveillance but said that Washington and Beijing have regular talks about Africa, and that the U.S. partnership with Djibouti remains strong. Washington extended its Camp Lemonnier lease for 20 years in 2014, paying $70 million annually.
Djibouti’s foreign minister, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, said in an interview that while it isn’t in Djibouti’s interests to alienate Washington, his country is “positioning itself in this big design China is putting in place.” He pledged “to keep balance between those partners present here.”
China is also playing down tensions. The outpost “is in order to better uphold international responsibilities and duties, and to protect China’s legal interests,” the Defense Ministry said in a faxed statement. It pledged not to engage in military expansion.
Djibouti, a former French colony slightly smaller than Vermont, overlooks the Bab-el-Mandeb, a 20-mile-wide strait between Africa and the Arabian peninsula at the entrance to the Red Sea. Roughly 20% of the world’s trade and half of China’s oil imports pass through the nearby Gulf of Aden. Djibouti also provides an outlet for trade with landlocked Ethiopia and other parts of Africa’s interior.
The French kept a base after Djibouti’s independence in 1977. Djibouti also hosts German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese forces, mostly for antipiracy patrols. The U.S. military came in 2003 to support the war on terror and has since expanded its base to about 570 acres, with a $1.4 billion upgrade under way.
The multinational presence lends the torpid capital, Djibouti City, an air of cosmopolitan intrigue akin to Casablanca in the 1940s. A French-speaking local elite rubs shoulders with buzz-cut U.S. security contractors, white-uniformed European naval officers, traders, diplomats and spies.
They congregate in Western bars and cafes among crumbling Moorish-style mansions or in two luxury hotels, a Sheraton and a Kempinski, while locals seek refuge from searing heat at the Siesta Beach.
Despite a mostly Muslim population, alcohol is allowed and women enjoy relative freedom. President Ismail Omar Guelleh won a fourth term in April amid opposition allegations he has stifled many political freedoms. Outside the capital, Djibouti is mostly desert and poor.
China’s navy conducted its first joint maritime exercises with Djibouti last year and has said its new outpost will be largely to support Chinese forces on missions such as antipiracy patrols off Somalia. PHOTO: CHINESE NAVY
China entered the mix around 2010 when it started financing or building infrastructure that now includes three ports, two airports, water and gas pipelines and a railway to Ethiopia, which Beijing hopes will turn Djibouti into a trading hub.
In 2013, the ports division of a Chinese state conglomerate took a stake in Djibouti’s port operator, and in 2014 they agreed to invest $590 million in the new Doraleh Multi-Purpose Port, which will be the country’s largest. Two more Chinese state companies won contracts to build it.
Djiboutian officials said last year they were discussing the naval outpost, too. China confirmed in February that construction had started.
During a recent visit, Chinese staff in hard hats, slacks and polo shirts could be seen moving around the commercial port, which largely obscures the restricted-access military outpost. None would answer questions.
The Chinese outpost is keenly monitored by the other foreign forces here, some of whose reconnaissance planes fly over on their way to and from antipiracy patrols.
Satellite images reveal substantial construction and land reclamation this year in an area between the port and a private guesthouse built by a sheik from Dubai, which has its own jetty, although it is unclear if that will be part of the base.
Mr. Youssouf, the foreign minister, said there are no precise limits on Chinese troop numbers, but the outpost could house no more than 2,000 and would likely have only 300. It will have a single berth for ships and no runway, but possibly a helipad, he said. It will cost China $20 million annually for 10 years with an option for 10 more and will be Beijing’s only military facility in Djibouti.
Until recently, China hadn’t sought to project force this far since the 15th century, when the “eunuch admiral,” Zheng He, sailed to East Africa. Soon after, China introduced a ban on maritime trade that contributed to its economic decline, culminating in the Communist revolution in 1949.
Since easing open its economy in 1979, China has focused on domestic development and often cited its lack of overseas bases as proof of a commitment to nonintervention in others’ affairs. That stance is becoming untenable following a decade in which Chinese companies have poured billions into mines, oil fields, railroads and other ventures from Argentina to the Arctic.
In Djibouti’s neighborhood, actual and pledged Chinese investment, mostly in oil and gas, totals $2.6 billion in South Sudan, $16 billion in Iraq and $26 billion in Saudi Arabia, according to the American Enterprise Institute.
China’s expanding economic presence has led to domestic pressure to protect its civilian expatriates and international pressure to help with multilateral security.
ENLARGE
Camel herders and other villagers around Doraleh, Djibouti, many of whom work at the port site, say they have seen Chinese troops moving in the area. PHOTO: JEREMY PAGE/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In 2008, China deployed its first warships to Gulf of Aden antipiracy patrols. Since 2013 it has sent hundreds of peacekeepers to South Sudan and Mali. Civil wars forced Beijing to evacuate 35,000 Chinese nationals from Libya in 2011 and 600 from Yemen last year.
Chinese officials said their navy experienced serious difficulties in protecting, maintaining and refueling ships and providing food and rest for crews during such missions.
Beijing also had trouble supplying its peacekeepers, and it was frustrated that other foreign navies got priority in Djibouti’s old port, where the U.S. and France have dedicated berths.
“Currently, we rely more on security cooperation to protect our interests. Undoubtedly we need to enhance our own capabilities,” said Maj. Gen. Chen Zhou, a senior Chinese military strategist. “Whether with aircraft or ships, we need this capability for strategic projection.”
China’s navy previously planned to piggyback on commercial ports built or operated by Chinese companies in countries such as Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, according to foreign officers and analysts who study Chinese strategy. But commercial ports are costly places to purchase services and are of limited use during combat operations that require secure, specialist facilities.
China’s strategy now, foreign analysts say, is to build small military or dual-use facilities, focused on Africa and the Mideast and manned with troops. China also is establishing military installations on islands it has built up in the South China Sea.
Hawkish Chinese officers have long called for foreign bases. Only recently was the idea incorporated into official publications on strategy, including a 2013 book produced by the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Military Science. It calls for China to establish “necessary overseas supply points and a limited force presence” abroad to protect lines of communication and “exert political and military influence in relevant regions.”
In Djibouti, Western military officials say they haven’t met their Chinese counterparts, who don’t participate in meetings among foreign forces here.
Chinese workers, seen here in May 2015, have built a railway linking Djibouti with neighboring Ethiopia that Beijing hopes will become a major trade route and eventually extend further across Africa. PHOTO: CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Longer term, their worry is that Djibouti, like many countries in the region, will put priority on Chinese interests as it becomes more dependent on Beijing’s largess.
Djibouti is already seeking more Chinese loans and investment, said its economy minister, Ilyas Dawaleh. He denied that gave Beijing leverage to expand its base but said China had the same right to do so as other nations.
“For the time being, let them establish what they have,” he said. “Then let’s see.”
Write to Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com
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