BEIJING -- China has completed a pier large enough to accommodate an aircraft carrier at a naval base in the eastern African nation of Djibouti, which could potentially allow the country's navy to project power outside the traditional operating areas of the East and South China seas.
The facility, China's first and only overseas military base, sits near the strategically important Bab-el-Mandeb Strait linking the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. It was built in 2017 as a naval "support facility" that Beijing said would be used as a base for anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and responding to accidents at sea.
