China Expected to Set up Overseas Military Base in Pakistan: US Annual Congress Report
Web Desk
Posted On June 8, 2017
A recently released Pentagon report sifted out Pakistan as a potential location for a Chinese military base in the near future; it is anticipated that Beijing would likely construct more overseas bases after instituting a facility in the African nation of Djibouti.
The forecast came in a 97-page yearly report to Congress that observed signs of progress throughout the Chinese military in 2016, financed by the robust defense budget that the Pentagon estimates to have exceeded $180 billion.
This is a bigger figure than China’s official defense budget of $140.4 billion. The US report said that the Chinese leaders appear committed to defense spending hikes for the “predictable future,” even as economic growth slowed down.
The report constantly quoted China’s erection of its first overseas naval base in Djibouti, which is already home to a major US military base and is tactically situated at the southern entrance to the Red Sea on the direction to the Suez Canal. The report states: “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.”
Read more: Pakistan’s SSG Makes it to The List of Top Elite Forces
Djibouti’s locality on the northwestern rim of the Indian Ocean has been a major source of rising tensions in India that it would turn out to be another of China’s ‘string of pearls’ of military coalitions and chattels ringing India, including Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.
However, the report did not say a word about India’s possible response to a Chinese military base in Pakistan.
But the US report thoroughly reported that Pakistan was already the principal Chinese arms importer in the Asian-Pacific region. That region accounts for $9 billion of the more than $20 billion in Chinese arms exports between the periods of 2011 to 2015.
Back in 2017, China signed an accord with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines.
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