China is laying the groundwork to establish naval outposts in strategic locations around the United States, according to a senior Republican lawmaker.

“They're positioning themselves in all the different ports — in the Straits of Malacca, in the South China Sea,” said Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., who chairs the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific and also sits on the subcommittee for the Western Hemisphere. “Then you bolster that up with ships in El Salvador, possible ships in Cuba, possible ships in Haiti. ... I think it’s a big cause for concern.”

President Trump’s administration warns regularly that China is using loans and economic aid to purchase influence and eventually “dominate” the Indo-Pacific region, a concern that the rising communist power dismisses as outdated Cold War thinking. But Beijing’s establishment of diplomatic relations with El Salvador is raising new fears that Chinese warships could dock in key ports in the Western Hemisphere.

Yoho said he's worried now that El Salvador has severed its long-standing diplomatic ties with Taiwan and instead build a relationship with the Communist government. The switch reflects China’s insistence that countries cut ties with Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a breakaway province held by separatist forces. But China also hopes that state-owned companies can expand operations into the “largely deserted” port of La Union.

“It is perfectly natural that China would be interested in having a port in El Salvador — it’s located at the center of Central America, acting as a transport and trade hub linking North and South America,” Xu Shicheng, a research fellow with the Institute of Latin American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the South China Morning Post. “The U.S. likes to say that it would be of military use just because it has a huge military presence in the region, but in fact, China has no military presence in the region.”

Such a shipping outpost in El Salvador could become an historic incursion into Central America.

"The United States has always had a vested interest in not seeing any foreign adversaries gain a substantial foothold in our hemisphere, because that threatens our national interests and ultimately our territory," Ana Quintana, the Heritage Foundation's senior policy analyst for Latin America and the Western Hemisphere, told the Washington Examiner.

Chinese pledges not to pursue military ambitions carry less weight with U.S. officials than they did in recent years, after Chinese President Xi Jinping has deployed military assets to artificial islands in the South China Sea throughout 2018. He made that move despite telling then-President Barack Obama, during a press conference at the White House, that China had no intention of militarizing the outpost.

“If El Salvador is foolish enough to borrow the money for that port from China, I feel bad for them, because China will end up owning that port for 100 years,” Yoho told the Washington Examiner.

That’s what happened to Sri Lanka, a strategically-located island in the Indian Ocean. China agreed to finance the construction of a major port in 2010, but then took control of the facility when the cash-strapped island defaulted on the debt payments. And it’s not just El Salvador that has Yoho worried. China reportedly plans to invest $30 billion in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world.

“You know Haiti can't pay that back,” Yoho said.

Military outposts in the Western Hemisphere could pose a serious danger if “a conflict breaks out with China” in the coming decades. “They've got hypersonic weapons; they could take out our fleet at any time and we have no defense against them,” the lawmaker said.

A conflict between the United States and China remains a remote possibility, given the potentially apocalyptic ramifications of a clash between the two nuclear powers. But Chinese ships in the region could threaten U.S. interests, even in the absence of a shooting war.

“But could they squeeze us out on trade, to just say, you know what, we're not letting ships go to your area?” Yoho suggested. “I don't know. To me it's disrupting the world order. Since World War II, we have not had another world war conflict. ... China is playing a very heavy hand in this, disrupting the balance that has lasted for over 70 years.”