Beijing has transformed the Red Sea into a dangerous surveillance hub, a former Pentagon official warned Sunday, after a new report revealed upgrades to China’s military footprint just six miles from a key $66 million-a-year U.S. military base in Djibouti, Africa. The report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) cited new facilities which it said would likely enable the Chinese military to monitor activities of other militaries operating nearby, although it also clarified it was not possible to determine whether China was actively intercepting communications. The developments, one defense expert told Fox News Digital, could also inject fresh tension into U.S.-China relations in the run-up to Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the White House on Sept. 24.
Beijing's intelligence-gathering capabilities are already under renewed scrutiny. "What China is clearly doing is building eavesdropping capabilities. That seems to be their aim," Morgan Murphy, former Trump White House official and press secretary for Mark Esper when he was secretary of defense during the first Trump administration.
CHINA-LINKED SPY SITE EXPANSION IN CUBA RAISES ALARMS NEAR KEY US MILITARY BASES "Beijing has clearly wiretapped the Red Sea. When you build a 30-meter (100-foot-wide) satellite dish and cover it with a dome, so nobody can see where it's pointing, it's pretty clear you're up to no good," Murphy added while stating of the Washington-based think tank, that "the specificity here reflects the thorough research we expect out of CSIS." The report pinpoints a large southeastern facility showing a control building, three 30-meter dipole antennas for high-frequency communications, two smaller antennas for very and "ultra-high frequencies", three mobile satellite dishes, four probable 5G towers and what CSIS said was a "radome" covering an unidentified asset. CSIS also highlighted two new communications facilities that it says have emerged since 2024 that are likely to form part of a C4ISR command architecture, expanding China’s ability to intercept signals, track naval movements and communicate with Beijing while monitoring foreign militaries in the region.
The facilities would provide China with "a much more robust picture of the operating environment in the region," the report said. CHINESE HACKERS TARGET NASA AND KEY US AGENCIES, DOJ ALLEGES "This isn’t a supply depot — it’s a 50-yard line seat over America’s power projection and the U.S. Navy," Murphy said before stating that the USA has "128 bases in more than 51 countries — China has just one." "But look at the location — a few miles from Camp Lemonnier, overlooking the chokepoint that moves roughly a sixth of global sea trade.
Great powers don’t plant listening posts next to rival fleets for 'logistics,'" he warned. "Britain held Gibraltar to see who entered the Med while Japan’s island radios came before the runways. The Soviets’ overseas sites were never just about fuel and Beijing is running that playbook on the Red Sea," Murphy added.
Although China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jian said China is "unaware of the specific situation" and framed the country as a "builder of international peace," the new facilities provide Beijing with a picture of regional operations, according to . CHINA IS BUILDING A MASSIVE SHIP THAT SHOULD SCARE AMERICANS ABOUT THE FUTURE "The new report is helpful in framing the conversation, and it comes at an awkward time for China because Xi Jinping is visiting the White House on the 24th of this month," Murphy said. "I'd bet a box of donuts this issue comes up.
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