China has fully militarized at least three islands it built in the disputed South China Sea and is now looking much farther afield — looking to establish a network of naval bases around the world to bolster its ability to project power and match the global reach of the U.S. Navy.

With Beijing’s first overseas naval base — situated in the small country of Djibouti on the Horn of Africa and operational since 2017 — already giving China a foothold in the Arabian Sea, national security experts are actively speculating over where the next outpost will be built.

The most likely possibilities are Sri Lanka, where Beijing has made its largest overseas commercial port investment over the past decade, and Equatorial Guinea, which is strategically located on West Africa’s Atlantic Coast and could put Chinese naval assets squarely in America’s backyard over the coming years.

That’s according to an assessment by researchers at the College of William & Mary that was presented Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation, where analysts said it’s just a matter of time before Beijing’s warships are operating in waters far from China.

The Pentagon has warned since 2021 that China boasts the world’s largest maritime military fleet in terms of total number of warships. While weaker than the U.S. Navy with regard to power, weaponry and sophistication, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has over 355 platforms compared to the roughly 300 warships in the American fleet.

“It’s inevitable that the growth of the Chinese navy is going to continue in the next decade,” said Alexander Wooley, who manages communications for William and Mary’s AidData Research Lab, which produced the assessment.

“They’re going to increase the number of ships,” Mr. Wooley, a former British Royal Navy officer, said at the Heritage presentation. “So, it’s a little bit hard to imagine that there [aren’t] going to be overseas naval bases in addition to Djibouti.”

While China has the resources and the global economic interests that justify a global navy, Brent Sadler, a senior research fellow at Heritage, said it is difficult to predict where Beijing will focus its base expansion efforts.

While Mr. Sadler said China may focus on militarizing ports that have received massive funding from Beijing’s Belt and Road foreign investment campaign over the past decade, he stressed that China’s stated goal of controlling Taiwan could factor into where future bases are located.

“The main operational focus is on a war over Taiwan,” said Mr. Sadler, who added that the types of capabilities that the Chinese navy currently has are also likely to inform the types of bases Beijing can be expected to pursue around the world.

International media attention is more often focused on China’s military muscle-flexing in the South China Sea, where the top U.S. military commander in the region warned last year that Beijing has been busy arming its man-made islands with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment and fighter jets.

U.S. Indo-Pacific commander Adm. John C. Aquilino said in March 2022 that the hostile actions have come in stark contrast to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s past assurances that Beijing would not transform the artificial islands in contested waters into military bases.

“I think over the past 20 years we’ve witnessed the largest military buildup since World War II by the PRC,” Adm. Aquilino said at the time, using China’s formal name. “They have advanced all their capabilities and that buildup of weaponization is destabilizing to the region.”

Chinese officials shot back at the time, asserting that Beijing has the right to develop South China Sea islands as it sees fit.

Great power competition

But more theoretical questions about specifically how China may one day challenge America’s global military footprint and dominance are often left out of national security debates on the future of great power competition between Washington and Beijing.

The U.S. presently outstrips all other nations by maintaining hundreds of bases in some 85 countries around the world. Even so, the prospect of an expanding band of Chinese navy bases is a source of major concern in Washington.

The then-commander of U.S. military operations in Africa made headlines in 2021 by asserting that China was quietly moving to establish a major naval port on the west coast of Africa, one that would host Chinese submarines and aircraft carriers capable of projecting Beijing‘s military power directly into the Atlantic.

“They’re looking for a place where they can rearm and repair warships,” said U.S. Gen. Stephen Townsend, head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command at the time, asserting at the time that Beijing was already close to establishing such a facility at its existing base in Djibouti more than 2,000 miles away in the Horn of Africa.

But the status of such operations is not clear, given the lack of transparency for outsiders to Chinese military plans.

The recent assessment produced by the William and Mary researchers examined a range of factors — including the status of ports and infrastructure financed by Chinese state-owned entities — in dozens of low-and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2021 to determine likely candidates for a Chinese base.

The assessment, which even ranks “eight leading options” for future Chinese naval bases, looked at the recipients of nearly $30 billion invested by Chinese state-owned entities since the turn of the century, money used to finance 123 projects to expand or construct 78 ports in 46 countries, including nearly $2 billion in the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota.

“While our data is neither exhaustive nor definitive, we suggest a list of port locations — where China has invested significant resources and maintains relationships with local elites — that may be favorable for future naval bases,” the assessment’s authors wrote.

Sri Lanka topped the list, followed by Equatorial Guinea, Pakistan, Cameroon, Cambodia, Vanuatu, Mozambique and Mauritania.

The rankings include a range factors that may weigh heavily within Beijing’s calculus, noting that that Mauritania’s “proximity to Europe and key chokepoints make it an attractive option,” while Mozambique features “a deepwater port with sizable Chinese investment, providing potential for a naval base location on East Africa’s coast.”

“China’s potential plans for establishing overseas naval bases present profound implications and options for both itself and the West,” the assessment stated, asserting that “in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, increased coordination between the Kremlin and Beijing has put the prospect of Chinese naval bases under intense scrutiny from the U.S. and its allies.”

“China must [also] balance protecting its global maritime interests with avoiding accusations of colonialism — perhaps an impossible needle to thread,” the authors wrote. “An important caveat for China is that none of the ports described [in the assessment] is currently militarily defensible. In a conflict situation, they would become high-value targets for an enemy.”

• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.