Lack of maintenance personnel for ships and allied networks greatly affects the Chinese navy's ability to deploy forces abroad.

In recent years, China has invested heavily in building warships, developing new weapons technology, building bases in Djibouti to realize its ambition to become the "world's leading naval force" that can compete equally.

However, the biggest weakness that China has yet to address in this ambition is that it does not possess highly skilled workers and modern facilities to maintain combat readiness for the garrisoned fleet.

"China can only dream of how the United States uses the host country's workforce and facilities in bases such as the Yokosuka in Japan and the Diego Garcia Islands in the Indian Ocean," said Yoshihara.

China "has a long way to go" in finding countries near "far seas" that can actively support its navy and take risks if war breaks out, he said.

"We can't compete with China everywhere," said Yoshihara.

Experts suggest that one of these options is to demonstrate the ability to defend in the Indian Ocean to deter and apply advanced technologies to force the Chinese military to change their minds.

Expert John Lee at the American Research Center at the University of Sydney in Australia, who coordinated the talk, said experts recognized China as a "regional and international power", but China "is" strong.

Lee said Chinese President Xi Jinping is betting on a strategy of spreading resources across the distant seas, near seas and around the continent to increase Beijing's influence.

Becoming a global military power is one of the factors that reflect the "elongation of economic interests" in China, Yoshihara observed.

"China has learned from the Libyan crisis nearly 10 years ago that it needs to protect its own citizens who are caught in some kind of conflict," he said.

However, expert Jack Bianchi said that countries in many regions of the world hesitate to let China deploy garrison forces, because they can be vulnerable in the crisis not caused by them.

To allay this concern, China will have to constantly make support commitments to the host country, but this will increase the cost of deploying forces abroad.

China has established bases in Djibouti, the Horn of Africa country and close to the gateway to the Red Sea, and is looking for viable facilities in eastern Africa and the southern Pacific.

However, the risk of "debt trap" from huge loan packages, together with poor quality goods and services provided by China, typically the recent batch of anti-Covid-19 medical supplies,

Bianchi said that when deploying overseas bases, China will have to handle everything from building infrastructure, paying maintenance fees to the logistics chain serving the base, costing

"These alliance relationships cannot be formed overnight. They are made up of intangibles including beliefs, shared values, formal interactions, and a long partnership.