China will build string of military bases around world

Locations include Middle East, Pakistan, and western Pacific to protect Belt and Road Initiative
The Guardian

Beijing currently has just one overseas military base, in Djibouti. 

The US Defense Department expects China to add military bases around the world to protect its investments in it ambitious One Belt One Road global infrastructure program, according to an official report released on Thursday.
Beijing currently has just one overseas military base, in Djibouti, but is believed planning others, including possibly Pakistan, as it seeks to project itself as a global superpower.
“China’s advancement of projects such as the ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiative (OBOR) will drive military overseas basing through a perceived need to provide security for OBOR projects,” the Pentagon said in its annual report to Congress on Chinese military and security developments.
“China will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries,” the report said.
That effort could be constrained by other countries’ wariness of hosting a full-time presence of the People’s Liberation Army, the report noted.
But target locations for military basing could include the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the western Pacific.
The report came as the Pentagon also warned that deepening Chinese activities in the Arctic region could also pave the way for a strengthened military presence, including the deployment of submarines to act as deterrents against nuclear attack.
The assessment is included in the US military’s annual report to Congress on China’s armed forces.
The Pentagon report noted that Denmark has expressed concern about China’s interest in Greenland, which has included proposals to establish a research station, establish a satellite ground station, renovate airports and expand mining.
“Civilian research could support a strengthened Chinese military presence in the Arctic Ocean, which could include deploying submarines to the region as a deterrent against nuclear attacks,” the report said.

US commits to aiding Philippines in South China Sea.

China has already established well-armed outposts on contested atolls it build up in the South China Sea.
Last year, there were reportedly discussions on a base in the Wakhan corridor of northwest Afghanistan.
In addition, The Washington Post recently identified an outpost hosting many Chinese troops in eastern Tajikistan, near the strategic junction of the Wakhan Corridor, China, and Pakistan.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has sought to project the country’s power beyond its immediate “back yard” in east and southeast Asia.
This includes strengthening the country’s presence in international institutions, acquiring top-flight technology and establishing a strong economic presence worldwide.
It also includes projecting the country’s military force on land, sea and in space, the report notes.
“China’s leaders are leveraging China’s growing economic, diplomatic, and military clout to establish regional preeminence and expand the country’s international influence,” the report said.
Beijing in particular increasingly see the United States as becoming more confrontational in an effort to contain China’s expanding power, it said.

Chinese Peril

In Central Asia’s forbidding highlands, a quiet newcomer: Chinese troops
By Gerry Shih

Hundreds of Chinese troops have been posted for three years at an outpost near Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan. 

NEAR SHAYMAK, Tajikistan — Two miles above sea level in the inhospitable highlands of Central Asia, there’s a new power watching over an old passage into Afghanistan: China.
For at least three years, Chinese troops have quietly monitored this choke point in Tajikistan just beyond China’s western frontier, according to interviews, analysis of satellite images and photographs, and firsthand observations by a Washington Post journalist.
While veiled in secrecy, the outpost of about two dozen buildings and lookout towers illustrates how the footprint of Chinese hard power has been expanding alongside the country’s swelling economic reach.
Tajikistan — awash in Chinese investment — joins the list of Chinese military sites that includes Djibouti in the strategic Horn of Africa and man-made islands in the South China Sea, in the heart of Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s economic ambitions over the past seven years have brought a wave of major investment projects, from the resource-rich Caspian Sea to Cambodia’s coastline.
The modest facility in Tajikistan — which offers a springboard into Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor a few miles away — has not been publicly acknowledged by any government.
But its presence is rich in significance and symbolism.
At a moment when the United States might consider a pact that would pull American troops out of Afghanistan, China is tiptoeing into a volatile region critical to its security and its continental ambitions.

Already, the retreat of old powers and arrival of the new are on display in Tajikistan, a tiny, impoverished country that served as a gateway into Afghanistan for U.S. units in the early phases of the 2001 invasion.
During a recent trip along the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, The Post saw one of the military compounds and encountered a group of uniformed Chinese troops shopping in a Tajik town, the nearest market to their base. 

They bore the collar insignia of a unit from East Turkestan, the Chinese colony where authorities have detained an estimated 1 million Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority.
The crackdowns against the Uighurs have been internationally condemned as a violation of human rights.
“We’ve been here three, four years,” a soldier who gave his surname as Ma said in a brief conversation while his Chinese comrades, guided by a Tajik interpreter, bought snacks and topped up their mobile SIM cards in Murghab, a sprawl of low-rises about 85 miles north of the base.
When asked whether his unit had intercepted anyone crossing from Afghanistan, Ma smiled.
“You should be aware of our government’s policies about secrecy,” he said. 

“But I can say: It’s been pretty quiet.”

Scarce public information
Details about China’s activities at the facilities, some of which bear the Chinese and Tajik emblems, are not made public. 

Also unclear are the arrangements over their funding, construction and ownership. 

Satellite imagery shows what appear to be two clusters of buildings, barracks and training grounds, about 10 miles apart near the mouth of the Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of territory in northeastern Afghanistan.

A Chinese soldier with the surname Ma buys goods in the Murghab bazaar. He told The Post that Chinese forces have been in Tajikistan for three to four years. 

The Post separately spoke to members of a German mountaineering expedition who said they were interrogated in 2016 by Chinese troops patrolling the Afghan corridor, near the settlement of Baza’i Gonbad. 

Photos provided by Steffan Graupner, the expedition leader, showed Chinese mine-resistant armored vehicles and equipment embossed with the country’s paramilitary logo. 

Taken together, the findings add weight to a growing number of reports that China, despite public denials, has been conducting security operations inside Afghanistan.
China’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment and directed questions to the Defense Ministry, which did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement, Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry said there are “no People’s Republic of China military bases on the territory of the Republic of Tajikistan,” nor “any talks whatsoever” to establish one.
Analysts say the Chinese encountered by The Post may be paramilitary units under the command of the central military leadership but technically distinct from the People’s Liberation Army, China’s main war-fighting force.
U.S. officials say they are aware of the Chinese deployment but do not have a clear understanding of its operations. 

They say they do not object to the Chinese presence because the United States also believes that a porous ­Afghan-Tajik border could pose a security risk.

A satellite view of one of the Chinese outposts at the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan on Sept. 29.

Despite harboring concerns about militants in Afghanistan for decades, China has been loath to be seen as siding with any party in the conflict, much less to put boots on the ground.
Instead, China’s state-owned companies and banks have inked infrastructure deals, mining concessions and loans across Central and South Asia, the poor and turbulent belt that makes up its backyard. 

Its diplomats, who have robust ties with Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Taliban, have talked up China’s role as a regional peace broker — never a peacekeeper.
But China’s global posture is changing under Xi, who has shed the country’s long-standing isolationism and spoken loftily about restoring its great-power status.
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) strategists increasingly advocate for pushing beyond the Chinese mainland with deployments that follow in the wake of the country’s expanding “haiwailiyi,” or interests abroad, said Andrew Scobell, a Chinese security expert at the Rand Corp.
“China’s peaceful rise has encountered a complicated and severe situation,” Maj. Li Dong wrote in a 2016 journal article as part of a PLA assessment of China’s overseas military strategy. 

He pinpointed the Central Asian frontier as one of three top flash points along with the Korean Peninsula and the East and South China seas.
China’s deployments abroad lack strength and “flexibility,” Li wrote. 

“China should push the construction of its overseas military presence gradually.”

A rugged chessboard
In 2017, China unveiled a naval base in Djibouti that gave it a foothold in the Middle East and Africa. It steadily installed infrastructure — and later, weaponry — in the contested South China Sea. 

A recent Pentagon report predicted a PLA base could appear soon in Pakistan — a prospect China has denied.

Chinese troops visit the Murghab bazaar. 

Beijing’s moves have been similarly opaque in the rugged mountains spanning Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China: the same chessboard where czarist Russia and the British Empire vied for influence 150 years ago.
There will be “no Chinese military personnel of any kind on Afghan soil at any time,” Col. Wu Qian, the Defense Ministry’s spokesman, told reporters in August.
In private, the Chinese tell a slightly different story.
In late 2017, the Development Research Center, an influential think tank under China’s cabinet, invited a handful of Russian researchers to its central Beijing offices. 

In what was billed as a private seminar, the Chinese explained why China had a security presence in Tajikistan that extended into the Afghans’ Wakhan Corridor, according to Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a Russian participant.
The Chinese researchers took pains to describe the outpost as built for training and logistical purposes — not a military occupation. 

They also sought to gauge Russia’s reaction with questions: How would Moscow view China’s move into its traditional sphere of influence? 

Would it be more palatable if China deployed private mercenaries instead of uniformed men?
“They wanted to know what Russia’s red lines were,” said Gabuev, who has held similar conversations with scholars working under the Chinese intelligence agency. 

“They don’t want Russia blindsided.”
In the 1990s, a Uighur separatist group, calling itself the East Turkestan Independence Movement, rose in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban and threatened attacks against China. Although Western officials and analysts question the ETIM’s ability to carry out significant attacks, it heralded the beginning of an extremist threat facing China.
Since 2014, hundreds of Uighurs have left China for Syria, and Chinese officials, like their Western counterparts, have warned about the prospect of fighters there decamping for Central Asia as they lose territory. 

In 2016, the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan was targeted in a suicide bombing that Kyrgyz authorities attributed to the al-Nusra Front in Syria.

'You never saw us here'
To make the days-long overland journey across Tajikistan, from the capital, Dushanbe, to the remote canyon held by Chinese soldiers, is to witness a landscape altered by an even more irrepressible force than the troops: Chinese money.
In the west, Chinese-built coal-fired plants loom over the skyline, providing electricity and heat to the capital’s residents. 

In the east, Chinese-funded hospitals and schools rise from the hardscrabble countryside. 

In the south, Chinese-financed tracks circumvent a crucial Soviet-era railway that had been shut down by Tajikistan’s neighbor, Uzbekistan. 

Stitching it all together are Chinese-bored tunnels and ­Chinese-laid asphalt that cut hours off trips along the country’s winding east-west highway.

Murghab, established as an army outpost in the 1890s by Russian Cossacks, is about 85 miles north of the remote Chinese border outpost. 

The projects reflect Tajikistan’s strategic position in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, an ambitious infrastructure investment plan to pull the Eurasian land mass into its economic embrace. China, through a single state bank, held more than half of Tajikistan’s external debt as of 2016, up from none in 2006, according to 2017 Tajik Finance Ministry data.
In the soft-power stakes, the United States and Russia both appear to be losing relative ground to China, which provides scholarships for undergraduate Tajiks and military academy training for up-and-coming defense officials.
Susan M. Elliott, former U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan, said China’s generous aid and funding should be applauded but viewed with skepticism. 

In the past year, a handful of countries that have taken Chinese investments have reconsidered BRI deals amid allegations of corruption and low feasibility.
“If someone’s offering money to build roads and help put power lines up, it’s hard to turn that down when you have no alternative,” Elliott said. 

“This is a strategic and important part of the world, and we need to continue our strong partnerships with Tajikistan and other countries in the region.”
In many ways, the shifting geopolitical currents play out on the windy streets of Murghab, established as an army outpost in the 1890s by Russian Cossacks.
These days, it is Chinese troops who are dropping by in their unassuming minivans to pick up provisions.
Aiperi Bainazarova, a part-time manager at the only hotel in town, said locals believed there were hundreds of Chinese troops who stayed on base. 

They mostly come to town to buy phone credit. 

Sometimes they buy hundreds of kilograms of yak meat at the price of 30 somoni — about $3 — a kilo, she said.
“It helps the economy,” said Bainazarova, 21, an ethnic Kyrgyz who studied on a Chinese government scholarship in Shanghai.
Despite the Chinese government’s insistence on keeping things secret, its troops’ periodic visits to Murghab’s bazaar, a row of shipping containers converted into storefronts, are anything but.

Safarmo Toshmamadov is a shopkeeper in Murghab. Some of her customers are Chinese troops. 

Safarmo Toshmamadov, a 53-year-old ethnic Pamir shopkeeper, said they have come to her for maybe three years. 

Some attempt a few words of Russian — although they always come accompanied by Tajik interpreters, she said.
“We don’t think about them, and they don’t bother us,” Toshmamadov said, shrugging. 

“They buy my water and snacks. It’s good.”
One afternoon outside Toshmamadov’s store, a Post reporter saw Ma, the Chinese soldier, who was initially surprised to encounter another Chinese speaker.
He spoke guardedly but affably about his deployment, which he explained was secret.
“You should know our government’s standard policies around revealing information,” he said. 

“So don’t tell your friends.”
When asked to pose for a photo together, Ma recoiled.
“Remember,” he said, walking away. 

“You never saw us here.”

Axis of Evil

China and Russia’s awkward romance
By Jonathan Hillman

Oriental despots: Xi Jinping hosted Vladimir Putin in Beijing to discuss increasing economic and military cooperation between their two countries. June 25, 2016. 

This week, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are capitalizing on President Trump’s absence from two major summits. 

Putin met with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Singapore, and Xi will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Papua New Guinea. 

In Asia, where economics is strategy, Xi and Putin are not only showing up but claiming to champion a new approach to globalization.
Lately, Xi and Putin like calling for openness and inclusivity, appropriating Western language to fuel resentment in many of the places that have benefited from globalization the most. 

They even pledged to link their signature economic visions in 2015, a political act kept alive by endless joint statements and signing ceremonies, including those last week. 

China’s Belt and Road Initiative promises $1 trillion of new infrastructure, trade deals and stronger cultural ties with over 80 countries. 

The Eurasian Economic Union puts Russia at the center of a single market for goods, services, capital and labor.
The problem is not American ignorance of this threat but the absence of a coherent strategy in meeting it. 

“Moscow and Beijing share a common interest in weakening U.S. global influence and are actively cooperating in that regard,” the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded in a 2017 report. 

But unintentionally, the cumulative effect of U.S. sanctions against Russia and tariffs against China could hasten the very threat Washington seeks to avoid: an anti-Western authoritarian partnership between the world’s largest nuclear power and second-largest economy.
That nightmare can still be avoided. 

Thankfully, the Sino-Russian partnership still has an artificial flavor, supported more by leaders-on-high than organic developments on the ground. 

After each round of ceremonial signings and partnership promises, China still towers above Russia in economic and demographic terms. 

With a long history of invasions, Russia’s paranoia about foreign powers approaching its borders will not vanish overnight.
But Russian policymakers must be persuaded to take China’s economic power as seriously as the West’s military power. 

China’s grand ambitions run through Russia and its neighbors, but its investments and infrastructure projects have not yet triggered alarms in Moscow. 

Russia is the gatekeeper for China’s overland push westward, but Xi now holds the keys in the form of investment and respect that Putin, economically and diplomatically isolated from the West, craves.
Washington should highlight the risks of China’s Belt and Road in Russia’s backyard. 

Three of the eight countries with the highest debt risk from Chinese lending are Russia’s close neighbors: Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. 

China can exploit the weakness of small economies that borrow big, as it did when it wrote off a portion of Tajikistan’s debt in exchange for disputed territory in 2011. 

Inevitably, as China’s economic footprint grows, so will its security footprint. 

Sightings of Chinese military vehicles and construction in Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor suggest this expansion is already underway.
To take the air out of Xi and Putin’s globalization tale, Trump’s trade policy must be updated. Yesterday, a memorandum of understanding was signed to boost trade between ASEAN and the Eurasian Economic Union. 

China is backing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a regional deal that gained momentum when Trump withdrew from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

Easier said than done, but the United States urgently needs to get back into the game of offering regional alternatives rather than bilateral ultimatums.
Finally, a bit of old-fashioned diplomacy would go a long way. 

For now, the United States does not need to choose between Russia and China, as President Richard Nixon famously did over four decades ago. 

It would be wiser to work selectively with both sides, toning down the “with us or against us” rhetoric and noting areas of existing cooperation. 

Before reflexively approving the next round of sanctions, American policymakers should carefully evaluate their longer-term consequences, such as encouraging the rise of alternative payment systems, harm to the dollar, and pushing U.S. competitors closer.
With restraint and patience, the United States could reestablish itself as a natural wedge between Russia and China. 

At the very least, it must avoid becoming a bridge that unites them.

Who is at risk from China’s Belt and Road Initiative debt trap?

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is raising the risk of a sovereign debt default among small and poor countries
By Nikita Kwatra

China BRI will potentially span 68 countries and could have implications for each of these countries’ public debt.

Mumbai -- China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which seeks to invest about $8 trillion in infrastructure projects across Asia, Europe and Africa, has come under intense scrutiny, not least due to suspicions over China’s intent behind the ambitious project. 

A study by the Centre for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank, analyses one important consequence of BRI: debt.
While the study finds that it is unlikely that the BRI will be plagued with wide-scale debt sustainability problems, it is likely to raise the risk of a sovereign debt default among relatively small and poor countries.
The BRI will potentially span 68 countries and could have implications for each of these countries’ public debt. 

To understand these effects, the study first uses sovereign credit risk ratings and World Bank debt sustainability analysis to identify 23 of the 68 countries currently at risk of debt distress. 

For these 23 countries, the study adds the Belt and Road Initiative lending pipeline into the countries’ overall debt and debt to China as of end of 2016.
They find that eight countries could face difficulties in servicing their debt because of the Belt and Road Initiative. 

These include Pakistan, Djibouti, the Maldives, Laos, Mongolia, Montenegro, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. 

Pakistan, which through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, serves as the centrepiece of the BRI and is by far the largest country exposed, with China reportedly financing about 80% of its estimated $62 billion debt. 

According to the think-tank, China’s case-by-case approach in dealing with debt relief in the past could prove “problematic”.
One example is China’s acquisition of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port after the Sri Lankan government failed to service its debt.
Unlike most of the world’s other major creditors, China is not bound to a set of rules on how it addresses debtor repayment problems. 

Currently, China is only an ad hoc participant of the Paris Club, a collection of creditor nations which follow a set of rules in dealing with debtor nations. 

The think-tank advocates applying globally-accepted creditor disciplines and standards to the Belt and Road Initiative.
To do this, they recommend the World Bank and other multilateral banks work with the Chinese government to set the lending standards for the BRI projects.
Another recommendation is to establish a new creditor’s group which would maintain the core principles of the Paris Club.
To mitigate lending risks, China is also recommended to provide technical and legal support to developing countries. 

Finally, the think tank proposes that China should offer debt swap arrangements in support of environmental goals where borrowing country debt is forgiven in exchange for a commitment to an environmental objective, for instance, forest preservation.

China's debt traps

China's Silk Road project runs into debt jam
By Julien Girault
China's dictator Xi Jinping says trade with Belt and Road countries has exceeded $5 trillion

China's massive and expanding "Belt and Road" trade infrastructure project is running into speed bumps as some countries begin to grumble about being buried under Chinese debt.
First announced in 2013 by Xi Jinping, the initiative also known as the "new Silk Road" envisions the construction of railways, roads and ports across the globe, with Beijing providing billions of dollars in loans to many countries.
Five years on, Xi has found himself defending his treasured idea as concerns grow that China is setting up debt traps in countries which lack the means to pay back the Asian giant.
"It is not a China club," Xi said in a speech on Monday to mark the project's anniversary, describing Belt and Road as an "open and inclusive" project.
Xi said China's trade with Belt and Road countries had exceeded $5 trillion, with outward direct investment surpassing $60 billion.
But some are starting to wonder if it is worth the cost.
During a visit to Beijing in August, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said his country would shelve three China-backed projects, including a $20 billion railway.
The party of Pakistan's new prime minister, Imran Khan, has vowed more transparency amid fears about the country's ability to repay Chinese loans related to the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
China's "new Silk Road" envisions the construction of railways, roads and ports across the globe

Meanwhile the exiled leader of the opposition in the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, has said China's actions in the Indian Ocean archipelago amounted to a "land grab" and "colonialism", with 80 percent of its debt held by Beijing.
Sri Lanka has already paid a heavy price for being highly indebted to China.
Last year, the island nation had to grant a 99-year lease on a strategic port to Beijing over its inability to repay loans for the $1.4-billion project.

Ambiguous partner
"China does not have a very competent international bureaucracy in foreign aid, in expansion of soft power," Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder and research director at J Capital Research, told AFP.
"So not surprisingly they're not very good at it, and it brought up political issues like Malaysia that nobody anticipated," she said.
"As the RMB (yuan) becomes weaker, and China is perceived internationally as a more ambiguous partner, it's more likely that the countries will take a more jaundiced eye on these projects."
The huge endeavour brings much-needed infrastructure improvements to developing countries, while giving China destinations to unload its industrial overcapacity and facilities to stock up on raw materials.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping (C) says the initiative is 'not a China club'

But a study by the Center for Global Development, a US think-tank, found serious concerns about the sustainability of the sovereign debt in eight countries receiving Silk Road funds.
Those were Pakistan, Djibouti, Maldives, Mongolia, Laos, Montenegro, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
The cost of a China-Laos railway project—$6.7 billion—represents almost half of the Southeast Asian country's GDP, according to the study.
In Djibouti, the IMF has warned that the Horn of Africa country faces a "high risk of debt distress" as its public debt jumped from 50 percent of GDP in 2014 to 85 percent in 2016.
Africa has long embraced Chinese investment, helping make Beijing the continent's largest trading partner for the past decade.
On Monday, a number of African leaders will gather in Beijing for a summit focused on economic ties which will include talks on the "Belt and Road" programme.

'Not a free lunch'
China bristles at criticism.
Sri Lanka has already paid a heavy price for being highly indebted to China

At a daily press briefing on Friday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying denied that Beijing was saddling its partners with onerous debt, saying that its loans to Sri Lanka and Pakistan were only a small part of those countries' overall foreign debt.
Stevenson-Yang said China's loans are quoted in dollar terms, "but in reality they're lending in terms of tractors, shipments of coal, engineering services and things like that, and they ask for repayment in hard currency."
Standard & Poor's said Beijing structures the infrastructure projects as long-term concessions, with a Chinese firm operating the facility for a period of 20 to 30 years while splitting the proceeds with the local counterpart or government.
The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, raised concerns about potential debt problems in April and advocated greater transparency.
"It's not a free lunch, it's something where everybody chips in," she said.