NEW DELHI, June 7: China is building a naval facility in Cambodia for military use, the second such overseas outpost after Djibouti and first in the strategically significant Indo-Pacific region, according to media reports on Tuesday.
The military presence will be on the northern portion of Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, on the Gulf of Thailand, the report said. This is China’s only other foreign military base right now after a naval facility in the East African country of Djibouti. It further said the new naval base is part of Beijing’s strategy to build a network of military facilities around the world in support of its aspirations to become a true global power.
Having a facility capable of hosting large naval vessels would be an important element of the country’s ambition to expand its influence in the region. “We assess that the Indo-Pacific is an important piece for China’s leaders, who see the Indo-Pacific as China’s rightful and historic sphere of influence,” Western officials said. “They view China’s rise there as part of a global trend toward a multipolar world where major powers more forcefully assert their interests in their perceived sphere of influence.”
The earlier media reports in 2019 that China had signed a secret agreement to allow its military to use the base was denied by both the countries then. At the time, both Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Chinese Defence Ministry had dismissed the reports.
“What we’ve seen is over time is a very clear and consistent pattern of trying to obfuscate and hide both the end goal as well as the extent of Chinese military involvement,” the official sources said. “The key thing here is the [PLA’s] exclusive use of the facility and having a unilateral military base in another country.”
(Manas Dasgupta)