China seeks military bases in Pakistan

While Pakistan wants China to build a naval base at its southwestern seaport of Gwadar in Balochistan, Beijing is more interested in setting up military bases either in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) or in the Federally Administered Northern Areas (FANA) that border its Xinjiang province.
The Chinese desire is aimed at containing growing terrorist activities of Chinese rebels belonging to the al Qaeda-linked East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which is also known as the Turkistani Islamic Party (TIP), according to The Asia Times.
The Chinese Muslim rebels want the creation of an independent Islamic state and are allegedly being trained in the tribal areas of Pakistan. According to well-placed diplomatic circles in Islamabad, Beijing’s wish for a military presence in Pakistan was discussed at length by the political and military leadership of both countries in recent months as China (which views the Uyghur separatist sentiment as a dire threat) has become ever-more concerned about Pakistan’s tribal areas as a haven for radicals.
Beijing believes that similar to the United States military presence in Pakistan, a Chinese attendance would enable its military to effectively counter the Muslim separatists who have been operating from the tribal areas of Pakistan for almost a decade, carrying out cross-border terrorist activities in trouble-stricken Xinjiang province.
There have been three high-profile visits from Pakistan to China in recent months; the first by Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar; the second by President Asif Ali Zardari and the third by Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt General Ahmad Shuja Pasha. The Pakistani visits were reciprocated by the September 28 visits to Islamabad of Chinese Vice Premier and Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu. This was prompted by two bomb blasts in the city of Kashgar in Xinjiang on July 30 and 31 in which 18 people were killed.
The explosions provoked senior government officials in Xinjiang into publicly claiming for the first time in recent years that the attackers had been trained in explosives in ETIM/TIP camps run by Chinese separatists in the Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan.