The USA says that the China is looking at Sri Lanka to build a military base.
According to the Pentagon’s US DoD 2021 report ‘Military & Security Developments Involving People’s Republic of China’ says PRC has likely considered Sri Lanka for military facilities to support naval, air, ground, cyber, space power projections.
The Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, released on Wednesday its comprehensive report on China.
The report further said that China planned to build 18 naval bases in areas of the Indian Ocean including Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Seychelles, Tanzania, Angola, and Tajikistan as locations for People’s Liberation Army (PLA) bases or military logistics facilities.
The report also says China has probably already made overtures to Namibia. Known focus areas of PLA planning are along the SLOCs from China to the Strait of Hormuz, Africa, and the Pacific Islands.
The PLA’s approach likely includes consideration of many different sites and outreach to many countries, but only some will advance to negotiations for an infrastructure agreement, status of forces or visiting forces agreement, and/or basing agreement.
Chinese media stress that those bases will be different from the American type of bases.
Few months ago the Chinese navy’s Type 039 submarine Changcheng 329 and submarine rescue ship the Changxingdao visited Colombo and berthed at CICT’s dock. The dock has been built with Chinese aid of $500 million investment and China has built Hambantota Port as its naval base.
