A Pentagon report announced on Tuesday singled out Pakistan as a possible location for a future Chinese military base, as it forecast that Beijing would likely build more bases overseas after instituting a facility in the African nation of Djibouti.
The prophecy came in a 97-page annual report to Congress that saw advances throughout the Chinese military in 2016, funded by vigorous defense spending that the Pentagon estimated exceeded $180 billion.
That is higher than China’s official defense budget figure of 954.35 billion yuan ($140.4 billion). Chinese leaders, the US report said, appeared committed to defense spending hikes for the “probable future,” even as economic growth slows.
The report repeatedly cited China’s construction of its first overseas naval base in Djibouti, which is already home to a key US military base and is strategically located at the southern entrance to the Red Sea on the route to the Suez Canal.
“China most likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan,” the report said.
Djibouti’s position on the northwestern edge of the Indian Ocean has fueled worries in India that it would become another of China’s ‘string of pearls’ of military alliances and assets ringing India, including Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
The report did not address India’s probable reaction to a Chinese base in Pakistan.
But Pakistan, the US report noted, was already the primary market in the Asian-Pacific region for Chinese arms exports. That region accounted for $9 billion of the more than $20 billion in Chinese arms exports from 2011 to 2015.
Last year, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines.
