China gaining ground with island-building in
South China Sea
Satellite photos show the speed, scale
and ambition China has exerted to assert ownership over South China
Sea islands
The clusters of Chinese vessels busily dredge
white sand and pump it on to partly submerged coral, aptly named
Mischief Reef, transforming it into an island. Over a matter of
weeks, satellite photographs show the island growing bigger, its few
shacks on stilts replaced by buildings. What appears to be an
amphibious warship, capable of holding 500 to 800 troops, patrols
the reef’s southern opening.
China has long asserted ownership of the archipelago in the
South China Sea known as the Spratly Islands, also claimed by at
least three other countries, including the Philippines, an US ally.
But the series of detailed photographs taken of Mischief Reef shows
the remarkable speed, scale and ambition of China’s effort to
literally gain ground in the dispute.
They show that since January, China has been
dredging enormous amounts of sand from around the reef and using it
to build up land mass – what military analysts in the Pentagon are
calling “facts on the water” – hundreds of miles from the Chinese
mainland.
Island building: Mischief Reef -
Jan, 2012/March, 2015
The Chinese have clearly concluded that it is
unlikely anyone will challenge them in an area believed rich in oil
and gas and perhaps more important, strategically vital. Last week
Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of the US. Pacific fleet,
accused China of undertaking an enormous and unprecedented
artificial land creation operation.
“China is creating a great wall of sand with
dredges and bulldozers,” Adm Harris said in a speech in Canberra,
Australia. Defence secretary Ash Carter, on his first trip to
Asia, put the US concerns in more diplomatic language. In an
interview to coincide with his visit, published on Wednesday in the
Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest dailies, Mr Carter
said China’s actions “seriously increase tensions and reduce
prospects for diplomatic solutions” in territory claimed by the
Philippines and Vietnam, and indirectly by Taiwan.
The new satellite photographs, obtained and
analysed by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a Washington research group, certainly
confirm the worries expressed by Mr Carter and Adm Harris. “China’s
building activities at Mischief Reef are the latest evidence that
Beijing’s land reclamation is widespread and systematic,” said Mira
Rapp-Hooper, director of centre’s
Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, a website devoted to
monitoring activity on the disputed territory.
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