China to Build Up Presence in Djibouti Amid Military Overhaul
By JANE PERLEZ and CHRIS BUCKLEY

BEIJING — China announced on Thursday that it would establish its first overseas military outpost and unveiled a sweeping plan to reorganize its military into a more agile force capable of projecting power abroad.

The outpost, in the East African nation of Djibouti, breaks with Beijing’s longstanding policy against emulating the United States in building military facilities abroad.

The Foreign Ministry refrained from describing the new installation as a military base, saying it would be used to resupply Chinese Navy ships that have been participating in United Nations antipiracy missions.

Yet by establishing an outpost in the Horn of Africa — more than 4,800 miles away from Beijing and near some of the world’s most volatile regions —President Xi Jinping is leading the military beyond its historical focus on protecting the nation’s borders.

Together with the plan for new command systems to integrate and rebalance the armed forces, the two announcements highlight the breadth of change that Mr. Xi is pushing on the People’s Liberation Army, which for decades has served primarily as a lumbering guardian of Communist Party rule.

Mr. Xi told senior military officers this week that he wanted to “build a robust national defense and a strong military that corresponds to our country’s international stature, and is adapted to our national security and developmental interests,” the Xinhua news agency reported.

A presence in Djibouti would be China’s first overseas logistics facility to service its military vessels since the Communists took power, said David Finkelstein, director of China studies at CNA, an independent research institute in Arlington, Va.

“In the grand sweep of post-1949 Chinese history, this announcement is yet another indicator that Chinese policy is trying to catch up with national interests that have expanded faster than the capacity of the People’s Republic of China to service them,” Mr. Finkelstein said.

The new facility would enable the navy to live up to a strategy laid down this year by the Communist Party in a major defense document, known as a white paper, that outlined its ambitions to become a global maritime power.

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The United States maintains its only military base on the African continent in Djibouti, which it uses as a staging ground for counterterrorism operations in Africa and the Middle East. Last year, President Obama renewed the lease on that base for 20 more years.

China has invested heavily in Djibouti’s infrastructure, including hundreds of millions of dollars spent upgrading the country’s undersize port. It has also financed a railroad extending from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, to Djibouti, a project that cost billions of dollars. The country has a population of about 900,000, many of whom live in poverty.

Strategically, Djibouti offers an excellent place from which to protect oil imports from the Middle East that traverse the Indian Ocean on their way to China, military experts say. From Djibouti, China gains greater access to the Arabian Peninsula.

The news on Thursday of broad changes to the Chinese military signaled a major step forward in Mr. Xi’s program to shift its focus from traditional land armies to a more flexible, cohesive set of forces. China’s military planning and spending have increasingly focused on territorial disputes in the South China Sea and in waters near Japan.

Mr. Xi told a gathering of more than 200 senior military officers that the planned changes would take years and were essential to ensuring that the People’s Liberation Army could shoulder its increasingly complex and broad responsibilities, the official Xinhua news agency said Thursday.

But until now, efforts to revamp the way the military is run have stumbled because of the entrenched power of land forces that have dominated seven military regions, as well as the sheer complexity of reorganizing a force of over two million.

Enactment of the military reforms would be a political victory for Mr. Xi, who since coming to power in November 2012 has enforced an intense campaign against corruption that took down dozens of senior military officers. They have including two former vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, Gens. Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou.

That military graft was lubricated by rapidly rising defense budgets. In the decade up to 2014, China’s official military budget grew an average of 9.5 percent annually, after taking inflation into account, according to a recent Congressional Research Service study. That budget is set to grow an additional 10 percent this year, reaching about $145 billion. But many foreign analysts say China’s real military spending is higher.

Despite Beijing’s traditional rejection of what it calls American imperialism and hegemony, some Chinese experts believe that it is time to reconsider the need for overseas military facilities.

Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, who has argued that China should develop bases commensurate with its growing military power, said on Thursday that in doing so, China would only be doing what America had done.

“The United States has been expanding its business all around the world and sending its military away to protect those interests for 150 years,” Mr. Shen said. “Now, what the United States has done in the past, China will do again.”

Mr. Shen, who referred to the planned facility in Djibouti as a “base,” said it was necessary because “we need to safeguard our own navigational freedom.”

He added, “If whoever — pirates, ISIS or the U.S. — wants to shut down the passage, we need to be able to reopen it.”

The head of the United States Africa Command, Gen. David M. Rodriguez, said in Washington last week that China planned “to build a base in Djibouti” and had reached a 10-year agreement with the country’s government to do so. He said the installation would serve as a logistics hub and would enable the Chinese to “extend their reach.”

The United States military has praised China’s participation in the international antipiracy operations, which protect vital commercial shipping in a volatile part of the world.

But some American military experts, concerned about Beijing’s growing military capacity, have expressed unease about China having a land facility in Djibouti so close to Camp Lemonnier, a major American base where 4,000 service members, including Special Forces, and civilians train and carry out counterterrorism operations.

Hong Lei, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, offered few details about the Djibouti facility, but said it would provide Chinese ships with reliable supplies and enable crews to rest. “These facilities will help Chinese vessels to better carry out Chinese missions like escort and humanitarian operations,” he said.

Such statements suggest a far more modest facility than the sprawling American base at Camp Lemonnier. Washington announced in 2013 that $1.4 billion would be spent on expanding the base, from which drone operations over Somalia and Yemen are conducted.

France also maintains a base in Djibouti, which is a former French colony. Japan, which also participates in the United Nations antipiracy operations, keeps surveillance aircraft and several hundred personnel there.

陸首座海外軍事基地 設東非吉布地

經過經年的磋商，中國已與非洲之角小國吉布地達成一項十年合約的協議，準備在當地建立中國首個海外軍事基地。大陸官方昨已證實，兩國正協商在吉布地建設「保障設施」，有助中國在亞丁灣進行反海盜巡邏及區域任務，維護國際和地區和平穩定。

若談判達成，這將是大陸首個海外永久性軍事基地，由於美國早於當地設立在非洲最大的軍事基地，中共此舉引起各方關注。

中共擬在吉布地建海外軍事基地傳言已久，但此前官方對此消息「不承認也未否認」。美媒報導，美國非洲司令部總司令羅德里格斯日前表示，中國已與吉布地簽署一份長達十年的合約，預備在當地建首個海外軍事基地。

昨天中國外交部及國防部回答記者提問時，也已證實。中國外交部發言人洪磊表示，中方正與吉布地就在吉建設後勤保障設施協商，以幫助中國軍隊有效履行國際義務，維護國際和地區和平穩定。

國防部發言人吳謙在例行記者會上也表示，根據聯合國有關決議，2008年來，中方已派出21批護航編隊、60餘艘次艦艇赴亞丁灣、索馬里海域護航。護航編隊在執行任務過程中，官兵休整和食品、油料補給面臨很多實際困難，確有必要實施就近高效的後勤保障。

吉布地位處進入紅海與蘇伊士運河的咽喉，與戰亂頻仍的葉門遙海相望，與厄利垂亞、衣索比亞及索馬利亞接壤，以地緣政治來說可謂是金礦，因此成為美國重要反恐夥伴，也是目前外國軍人最密集的國家之一。

目前吉布地境內有美軍在非洲最大的軍事基地，法國和日本也都設有軍事基地。去年中吉簽署軍事協議，允許大陸海軍使用吉布地港，已激怒美國；未來中、美軍事基地在此並存將引發哪些效應，各界高度關注。

外界分析，隨中國海外利益不斷擴展，在吉布地建立長期軍事基地已是理所當然，這將大力增強中國在阿拉伯半島、埃及甚至非洲中部地區的情報搜集能力。

日本外交學者雜誌則撰文稱，中國不大可能將這一基地立即變為軍事基地，這與中國戰略不相符合，此一基地短期內還是屬於中國執行遠洋護航任務，進行補給修理等任務的綜合後勤中心。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/world/asia/china-military-presence-djibouti-africa.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20151127/c27chinabase/zh-hant/

2015-11-27．聯合報．A16．兩岸．記者郭玫君