China’s submarine diplomacy reaching deep and wide

CHIANG MAI – China’s delivery of two promised submarines to Thailand, now being assembled in Wuhan, may never actually reach the kingdom as Germany refuses to sell related engines to China because the boats will be sold on to a third country.

Export restrictions aside, the real reason could be that Germany, as well as Thailand, are becoming increasingly wary of China’s emerging new brand of submarine diplomacy.

In 2017, China established its first and so far only military base abroad — a naval facility in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa — which sparked widespread speculation Beijing was building a “String of Pearls”, as some researchers have termed it, comprised of military installations in the Indo-Pacific region.