Troops serving at China\u2019s first overseas military base, in the Horn of Africa country of Djibouti, should help promote peace and stability, President Xi Jinping told them in a video chat, encouraging them to promote a good image. China formally opened the base in August on the same day as the People\u2019s Liberation Army marked its 90th birthday. It is China\u2019s first overseas naval base, although Beijing officially describes it as a logistics facility.<\/p>\n
Djibouti\u2019s position on the northwestern edge of the Indian Ocean has fuelled worry in India that it would become another of China\u2019s \u201cstring of pearls\u201d military alliances and assets ringing India, including Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
Speaking to China\u2019s Djibouti-based forces during a visit to a joint battle command centre in Beijing, Xi \u201cgot a good understanding\u201d of the base\u2019s operations and the lives of the soldiers there, China\u2019s Defence Ministry said late on Friday. Xi \u201cencouraged them to establish a good image for China\u2019s military and promote international and regional peace and stability\u201d, the ministry said. The soldiers responded that they would not let Xi or China down, it said.<\/p>\n
China began construction of the base in Djibouti last year. It will be used to resupply navy ships taking part in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions off the coasts of Yemen and Somalia, in particular. Chinese President Xi Jinping is overseeing an ambitious military modernisation programme, including developing capabilities for China\u2019s forces to operate far from home.<\/p>\n
During his visit to the command centre, Xi also instructed the armed forces to improve their combat capability and readiness for war, the ministry said. Xi said progress in joint operation command systems, especially in efficiency at the regional level, was needed and troops must conduct training under combat conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Troops serving at China\u2019s first overseas military base, in the Horn of Africa country of Djibouti, should help promote peace and stability, President Xi Jinping told them in a video chat, encouraging them to promote a good image. China formally opened the base in August on the same day as the People\u2019s Liberation Army marked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9336,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334\/revisions\/9336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}