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Is China Planning a New Military Base in Africa? New Paper Weighs the Options

by Cobus van Staden
File image of a Jin-class nuclear submarine of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy. (Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/POOL/AFP)

Rumors that China is planning another military base in Africa are rife in Washington at the moment. Now a new paper by Paul Nantulya, a noted expert on Africa-China military links, was published by the Pentagon-aligned Africa Center for Strategic Studies. It unpacks the strategic calculations that underlie the global expansion of China’s navy and weighs the factors affecting the choice to place more bases on the continent.

The paper doesn’t directly address recent claims by senior Pentagon officials that China is considering Equatorial Guinea for an Atlantic base. Rather, it shows the breadth of Chinese strategic planning, and how much of its attention is falling on the Indian Ocean.

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