A senior Chinese officer has met Djibouti's military chief-of-staff in Beijing and thanked him for supporting China's construction of a military base in the Horn of Africa country, the second such high-level meeting in a month.

Djibouti's position on the northwestern edge of the Indian Ocean has fueled worries in India that it would become another of China's "string of pearls" of military alliances and assets ringing India, including Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

In February, China began construction of a logistics base in strategically located Djibouti that will resupply naval vessels taking part in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions off the coasts of Yemen and Somalia in particular.