China is exploring the possibility of building its first military base on the Atlantic ocean, according to classified intelligence reports viewed by the Wall Street Journal.

The proposed host for the military base is Equatorial Guinea, a small central African country of approximately 1.4 million people. Politically, Equatorial Guinea is a one-party state ruled by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasongo for the past 42 years. The country consistently ranks among the worst in the world on human rights, with Freedom House assigning a zero score on political rights, lower than Eritrea, Iran, or Chad. Its economy is dominated by resource extraction, with crude petroleum exports accounting for 90 percent of government revenues. China is Equatorial Guinea’s largest trading partner.

The precise site is speculated to be the small deepwater port at Bata, the largest city in the country. The commercial port was overhauled and expanded from 2008-2014 with Chinese financing. Another infrastructure project expanded the highway network from Bata to Niefang in the east of the country. Taken together, the projects helped lay the groundwork for greater commercial penetration of central Africa, notably into Gabon and the Republic of Congo.

A military base in Equatorial Guinea would represent a clear geopolitical win for Beijing by expanding its global network of sites for re-fueling, repairing, and re-supplying, thus increasing the blue water capabilities of the PLA Navy (PLAN). Currently there is only one such facility, located in Djibouti, a country that plays host to a slew of other foreign militaries, including those of Japan, France, and the United States. A second facility has long been rumored for the port at Gwadar, Pakistan, which serves as the linchpin of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. At this point the basic infrastructure has already been laid at Gwadar; all that’s left is for PLAN vessels to start making port regular port calls.

Other attempts at converting civilian facilities (nearly always built by Chinese state-owned companies over the past two decades) into military sites have been rumored in the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Seychelles, Tanzania, and Angola.

The US Response

Unsurprisingly, the possibility of any new PLAN base is pushed back on by the US authorities, and this is doubly true in the case of Equatorial Guinea due to its relative proximity to Washington’s backyard. However, the US response in this case outlines how the emerging ‘Cold War light’ dynamic between China and the United States might create problems for other US foreign policy objectives, notably the advancement of human rights and a ‘rules based international order.’