China seeks to rule the world, and one temporary step towards that is to gain control of the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the waters off the east coast of the United States.
Washington - China is currently in the process of exploring the possibility of establishing a naval base on the west coast of the continent of Africa, so that in the near future Chinese warships could regularly patrol off the east coast of the United States.
The first to sound the alarm was General Stephen Townsend, commander of the US Africa Command, during his recent testimony before the armed forces committees in the House and Senate in the US Congress. "They (the Chinese) now have their sights set on the Atlantic coast and they want to have such a base there," he said.
Currently, China's only naval base is located outside its territory in the Horn of Africa, specifically in Djibouti. The base is located near some of the world's busiest shipping routes, including those that run through the Suez Canal.
Gordon Chang, a senior fellow at the US Gatestone Institute, believes that the Chinese naval force is now surveying sites on the western coast of Africa, from Mauritania in the north to Namibia in the south.
Africa as a continent is important in itself because its area is larger than the United States, China, India, Japan and most of Europe combined, not only in military terms, but also in economic terms. Demographically dynamic world.
The importance of the continent is clearly evident from the words of General Townsend, who stated in a statement to Congress on the state of the armed forces in 2021 that “Africa, at the crossroads of the world, overlooks important strategic crossing points including the Strait of Gibraltar, the Strait of Sicily, the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandab and the Canal Mozambique".
Chinese planners are not only thinking of Africa, but they also have in mind several islands in the Atlantic, specifically Terceira, one of the Azores. On that island, which is part of Portugal, there is a port and, even more importantly, an air base, and the base known as Lajes Field is jointly operated by American and Portuguese forces.
Zhang, a member of the Gatestone Institute's advisory board, argues that if China controls the base, the Atlantic will not be safe. And from the runway, which is about 11,000 long, Chinese aircraft can patrol the northern and central regions of the Atlantic Ocean, thus cutting off air and sea traffic between the United States and Europe, and Beijing will also be able to prevent ships from reaching the nearby Mediterranean.
Experts making cuts to the Pentagon's budget are reducing activities at Lajes Field, making it a "ghost base". As a result, the base becomes a grab for China to take over.
Whether or not China captured Lajes, China's plans for Africa are clear. As Bradley Bowman, a senior director of the Center for Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Times this month, "It won't be long before you see Chinese naval vessels above and below water on a regular basis in the Atlantic."
A base in the Atlantic Ocean "will allow China to harm the United States in the hemisphere in which it is located," says James Holmes of the US Naval War College of the Gatestone Institute.
"This situation may lead to the withdrawal of some US forces from the Western Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, which will relieve pressure on China in the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, and it will also distract and exhaust us, which is in Beijing's interest," he added.
According to Zhang, a worst-case scenario is that China could then target US territory. For example, the Jess base is less than 2,300 miles from New York, which is shorter than the distance between Pearl Harbor and Los Angeles.
And China could get a base even closer. About 90 miles east of Palm Beach, on the island of Grand Bahama, a Hong Kong-based company is spending about $3 billion on a deep-water container facility, the Freeport Container Port.
That port was designed to take advantage of traffic from the recently expanded Panama Canal, but the concern is that the port will become another Hambantota. In December 2017, China seized the port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka, acquired 70 percent of the equity and signed a 99-year lease agreement after that project was unable to repay high-interest loans extended by China.
The Chinese takeover of the port was inevitable because the Hambantota port project was, from an economic point of view, a wrong idea from the start. Now there are fears that Hambantota will eventually become a Chinese naval base.
China's admirals have long been eyeing Sri Lanka. In September and October 2014, the Sri Lankan government allowed a Chinese submarine and a logistics support vessel to dock at the Chinese-funded Colombo International Container Terminal. Sri Lanka may be a model for China's militarization of the Bahamas. In addition to the very large facility in Freeport, there is a Chinese-funded port on Abaco Island, which is also part of the Bahamas.
The port of Abaco is essentially useless from a commercial point of view and may fall into the hands of Beijing. Hence, China may have two naval bases near the US state of Florida, unless the administration of US President Joe Biden moves quickly to prevent China from penetrating the Bahamas.
As Holmes points out, it would be a mistake to think that countries in Africa or in this hemisphere would not assert their own interests.
Currently, Beijing, using trade, investment, and other mechanisms, is resorting to bullying and intimidation tactics against countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, but the United States can counter this by working closely with capitals on both sides of the Atlantic.
However, Washington needs to look beyond the countries with the ports. South and Central America and the Caribbean are important in their own right, as is Africa.
Zhang believes that Washington, without realizing it, has strengthened, through trade and investment, the position of China, which declared the United States to be its enemy, noting that the total US bilateral trade with China last year amounted to nearly $560 billion.
Therefore, Washington should, by granting incentives and preventing it from reorienting trade toward countries in Africa and the Western Hemisphere, so that the United States can build support for democracy instead of the totalitarian regime in the Chinese way and allow countries to become less dependent on China’s money.
The United States has a long way to go to build relationships with African governments, as the volume of intra-American merchandise trade with the continent last year amounted to $45.8 billion, a very small amount.
This situation refocuses on Chinese naval bases. Beijing, as evidenced by the statements of its leaders, wants to rule the world, and one of the interim steps to achieve this is the control of the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the waters off the east coast of the United States.