China can count only North Korea as a full ally, and it is a painfully unreliable and unpredictable one. Pakistan occasionally plays the role of Chinese ally, though mainly with the purpose of unnerving India and of balancing its power, or of showing the US that it cannot be taken for granted. Access to military bases abroad is one reasonable proxy for trust, friendship or dependence, and China has currently just one, a shared anti-piracy facility in Djibouti in East Africa, which it is busy expanding to become its first true overseas base.
