Both China and Pakistan have refuted claims that the two sides have reached a secret agreement to allow China to build a naval base at Gwadar.
China's initiative to establish the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is generally met with suspicion, owing to any hidden strategic objectives driving its vision.
Hemmed in between the US, Japan, and Russia east of Malacca, in the South China Seas, The Sea of Japan and Okhotsk, and with contested territories and islands off Spratly requiring a constant US presence and vigil, China has long sought an opening into the Indian Ocean to make it a two-ocean Navy.
The two places where this can happen, through naval bases, are its neighbors Myanmar (which has been gripped by civil war, and genocide against the Rohingya) and Pakistan (which finds itself in a spiral of terrorism, sanctions, and civil strife).
To keep China at bay militarily, and to keep it hostage to logistical quagmires arising from increasingly unstable shipping routes flowing through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, Western powers appear keen to prevent China from developing a Blue Water Navy that operates far from its shores to protect its vital national interests.
Hence the suspicion around CPEC and the deep sea port of Gwadar.
However, it must be pointed out that China has already ventured out of its home waters with the establishment of a naval base at Djibouti by the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).
This facility has overt objectives: of securing China's strategic energy logistics channels; supporting military logistics for Chinese troops in the Gulf of Aden; peacekeeping; humanitarian and disaster relief operations; preventing piracy on high seas and allowing easy access for the PLAN warships into the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.
In keeping with the effort required to evacuate some 35,000 citizens from Libya in 2011, China maintains that it requires a "logistics base" to facilitate evacuation efforts, should the security situation warrant the same.
However since Djibouti separates Bab el Mandab from the Gulf of Aden, and also guards the approaches to the Horn of Africa, the Suez Canal, and the Gulf of Aqaba, it allows Chinese warships easy access to the Mediterranean Sea as well as to the Black Sea.
This helps China keep a watchful eye on simmering flashpoints on three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe, besides also remaining wary about its maritime trade routes.
Resultantly, an overseas footprint allows China to be more assertive on the global scene, giving it latitude in adding muscle to its diplomatic and military alliances globally, especially concerning Russia and India.
Staffed by 1000-2000 personnel, the PLAN's base at Djibouti has a 400m runway; an air traffic control tower, and a 1,120-foot pier that can fit two aircraft carriers and other warships or four nuclear-powered submarines.
Since Djibouti is still way far out of Chinese territories in the continent of Africa, it remains vulnerable in the absence of complementary bases in Africa and Asia.
Given that in a NATO-Russia context, it would be hard-pressed to obtain naval bases in Europe, there is every reason to expect that the PLAN will increase its footsteps in North Africa, the eastern and western seaboard of Africa, as well as in Asia.
This would give it a firmer foothold in the Indian Ocean as well as the Mediterranean Sea by opening up the Atlantic Ocean to its navy.
PLAN'S naval base at Djibouti can best be understood from the nuclear perspective, giving its navy survivability and its strategic forces the capability of a second strike, should China's mainland come under attack, and should it be further encircled and strangulated.
The compulsion to expand its military footprint emanates from India's frantic pace of growth, and expansion of its nuclear arsenal and its navy.
Other pressing factors include US military posturing, its increasing induction of battlefield nukes, as well as Russian concerns about Dirty Bombs being used in an asymmetrical attack, to rearrange the world order.
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