In August 2023, Ali Bongo, then-president of the Central African nation of Gabon, made a startling revelation to a top White House aide: During a meeting at his presidential palace, Bongo admitted he had secretly promised Chinese leader Xi Jinping that Beijing could station military forces on Gabon’s Atlantic Ocean coast. Alarmed, U.S. principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer urged Bongo to retract the offer, according to an American national security official. The U.S. considers the Atlantic its strategic front yard and sees a permanent Chinese military presence there—particularly a naval base, where Beijing could rearm and repair warships—as a serious threat to American security. “Any time the Chinese start nosing around a coastal African country, we get anxious,” a senior U.S. official said…

 China is conducting a backroom campaign to secure a naval base on the continent’s western shores, American officials say. And, for more than two years, the U.S. has been running a parallel effort to persuade African leaders to deny the People’s Liberation Army Navy a port in Atlantic waters. It’s a battle American officials say they are winning. So far, no African country with an Atlantic coastline has signed a deal with China, U.S. officials say. Authorities in Equatorial Guinea, a repressive, family-run oil state, have “consistently assured us that they will not have the P.R.C. construct a base,” the official said…

Only one African port, however, serves as a permanent base for Chinese ships and troops: The P.L.A.’s seven-year-old facility in Djibouti, which overlooks the strategic Red Sea where the U.S. and its allies are currently defending shipping routes against attacks from Iran-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen. The Chinese base, capable of docking an aircraft carrier or nuclear submarines, sits a short drive from the largest American base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier, a hub for the U.S. campaign against al-Shabaab, the virulent al Qaeda affiliate operating in Somalia.

Excerpt from Michael M. Phillips, U.S.-China Tensions Have a New Front: A Naval Base in Africa, WSJ, Feb. 10, 2024