Maybe my post was misleading, but I did not mean a base outside China in a foreign country, but simply a base closer forward to the operational region or zone.
If You look what MR is responsible for any possible operational theater - for example close to India, Russia ... - then there is no true current operational base very close enough to the borders.
I know in most cases, there won't be military confrontation - but speaking of the unlikely - I can't think that these operations will only be flown off their home bases.
Take the crisis around Myanmar earlier this year as an example: As far as i know the J-7 and J-11 were relocated from their home bases (44th and 33rd Divisions) closer to the border.
Or am I wrong ?
Deino
I think for one-off, limited threat events, the PLAAF would forward deploy to whatever the closest available airport may be. That could be a regional civilian airport and/or decommissioned former PLAAF air bases not currently actively in use, but I think those sites are not very common.
I think the most common occurrence would be to park a small, quick-alert unit of 2-4 armed and fuelled fighters at the closest civilian airport.
The PLAAF's airbase locations were largely chosen when the PLAAF was expecting to be fighting a full scale defensive war against an invading foreign power with technological and/or numerical superiority in the air.
Thus the location of major PLAAF air bases were chosen to maximise their defensibility and placed a fair distance from the boarders, so they won't be taken by enemy ground forces in the opening acts of any war.
In recent years, the PLAAF has largely kept their bases where they were for a combination of reasons, including history, economics/social (air bases are massive and would need a lot of land, thus relocating them would displace a great many people, especially anywhere along the already crowded coastal regions, where land prices are also very high), security (more to do with surveillance and spying concerns rather than a crippling enemy first strike ) etc.
By and large, I think the PLAAF is not expecting to be fighting any major wars in its near abroad, so see little point in establishing FOBs within China (with Taiwan being the obvious exception, although there are only a handful of fairly small FOBs facing Taiwan).
It is also aware of the likely negative diplomatic impacts of such a move, so I would expect them to stick with its current practice of using civilian airports for temporary emergencies. But obviously, that would change if there was a major deterioration of relations, and/or a significant developed within a neighbouring country to warrant a more permanent forward development of PLAAF assets.
The PLA is looking much further aboard when considering the possible need for power projection and expeditionary ops, which is why it is developing a carrier fleet and setting up foreign bases.