Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: January 24, 2016 Edition

China and Djibouti have “reached consensus” on building logistical facilities in the African state for the use of China’s military, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. The news confirms reports that have been swirling since May 2015, when Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guelleh said his country was in discussions with the Chinese over a possible military base. China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the negotiations for the first time in November of last year.

In February 2015, the Australian government asked Germany, France, and Japan to bid for the country’s largest defense procurement program (the so-called SEA-1000 acquisition project)—a contract to build up to 12 new submarines for the Australian Royal Navy, replacing the six Collins-class submarines currently in service.

Police in Tajikistan’s Khatlon have been busy fighting foreign influences and earlier this week they held a press conference to update the masses on their progress. Last year, amid allegations that officers were detaining men with beards and forcibly shaving them, authorities instructed police not to do so. RFE/RL’s Tajik service reported on the recent presser in which the police said they closed 162 shops selling hijabs and “convinced 1,773 women and girls to shun the alien headwear.” Police also arrested 89 hijab-wearing prostitutes and “brought to order” 12,818 men who “had overly long and unkempt beards.”

In a region dominated by autocratic governments, South Korea has been held up as a shining example of a liberal Asian democracy. But a report released by the Economist Intelligence Unit on Thursday has dealt a blow to that image with its finding that the country is no longer a “full democracy.”

In its Democracy Index 2015, released Thursday, the research and analysis firm found the country to have regressed to a “flawed democracy” last year. Among 167 states and territories, South Korea ranked the 22nd most democratic, just outside the top-20 grouping of “full democracies.”

The EIU defined flawed democracies as countries where there were “free and fair elections and, even if there are problems (such as infringements on media freedom), basic civil liberties are respected,” but democratic weaknesses remained. Such flaws included “problems in governance, an underdeveloped political culture, and low levels of political participation.”

The U.S. Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) are holding their annual war games, codenamed Guam Exercise (Guamex), near the U.S.-owned island of Guam in the northwestern Pacific Ocean.

The bilateral naval exercise began on January 20 and will continue for several more days. U.S. Navy assets involved include the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, USS Mustin and USS McCampbell. Both vessels are currently forward deployed and part of Destroyer Squadron 15, based at Yokosuka Naval Base in Yokosuka, Japan.

Armed, among other things, with both Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles,  Arleigh Burke-class guides missile destroyers are equipped with the Aegis Combat System—an integrated naval weapons system—and the AN/SPY-1 passive electronically scanned array naval radar.

Pakistan’s role in the Saudi-Iran split isn’t entirely obvious. The country is a Sunni-majority state with the second-largest Shia population of any Muslim-majority state after Iran. Pakistan shares close historical and diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, but shares a border with Iran. For Islamabad, maintaining good ties with both Riyadh and Iran is a priority for entirely different reasons.

China’s central bank plans to issue its own digital currency “as soon as possible,” according to Xinhua.The People’s Bank of China made the announcement at a conference on digital currency in Beijing.  

According to Xinhua, in 2014 the PBOC set up a team to examine the possibility of establishing a digital currency and particularly to study experiences in China and abroad. Two years later, the team “has made progress on technology, legal issues, and the impact on financial systems,” Xinhua said.

Charlie Custer, writing for Tech in Asia, notes that China is still a long way from actually rolling out a digital currency. Plus, he’s skeptical that the idea will take off in the country: “Chinese consumers are historically conservative about their savings, and dumping lots of money into a brand-new wholly-abstract digital currency could be a tough sell, even for China’s Central Bank.”

A date has finally been set for Afghanistan’s already-delayed parliamentary and district council elections. Afghans should return to the polls on October 15, 2016, according to the country’s Independent Election Commission (IEC), but there are significant hurdles to overcome before then.

One immediate challenge is the allegation, reported by the New York Times and made by Javid Faisal, a spokesman for Afghan CEO Abdullah Abdullah, that “the current election commission has no legitimacy because it was their weak management of the previous election that brought us on the brink of chaos.” He went on to say that electoral reforms are a “precondition to any election” and that includes changes to the commission.