06 March 2014

China planning airbase in Zimbabwe?

Wow. Maybe the Chinese are going to take this whole "power projection" thing seriously after all.

China is reportedly scheming to set up a military airbase in Zimbabwe's controversial Marange diamond fields of Manicaland province, as Beijing and Harare ratchet up military cooperation and closer than before foreign relations, The Telescope News has heard.
China has no known military bases in Africa, and insists on it's non-interference of internal politics stance of her allies on the continent, thus raising eyebrows as to whether Beijing could finally be making a paradigm shift in it's foreign military policy, in response to the Asian giants growing economic interests here.
The only one point, where it was thought China would finally start setting up military bases in Africa, was in 2011 in Seychelles. China had to weigh up, whether to open an Indian Ocean naval base, following an offer from the Seychelles government to establish a port to supply its anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden.
At the time Beijing's Defence Ministry, according to the British press had confirmed the development, only meeting stiff resistence and concern from India, whose former intelligence chief Vikram Sood said he was surprised the Seychelles government, had made the offer after being traditionally close to New Delhi citing the threats to his country posed by China's growing influence.

1 comment:

Brian said...

I don't know if the Chinese are taking the matter seriously, but I sure have trouble taking the source for this news story seriously!