Examining the South China Sea conflict
Dangerous Waters
  • Home
  • Forum Info
    • Presentations
    • Contributors
  • Background
  • News
  • 2016 Harvard Forum
  • Maritime Awareness Project
  • 2016 Yale Forum

From the BBC: China is building islands in the SCS

9/10/2014

 
Picture
Image from the Philippine armed forces, screenshot from BBC report.
The BBC reports that the Chinese are bringing in material and dredging around the Johnson South Reef, building new islands.  A report by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, "China's Island Factory," is up today on the BBC website.  Some of the report is quoted below.
"The appearance of these new islands has happened suddenly and is a dramatic new move in a longstanding territorial struggle in the South China Sea.

At the beginning of this year, the Chinese presence in the Spratly Islands consisted of a handful of outposts, a collection of concrete blockhouses perched atop coral atolls.

Now it is building substantial new islands on five different reefs.

We are the first Western journalists to have seen some of this construction with our own eyes and to have documented it on camera.

On one of these new islands, perhaps Johnson South Reef, China seems to be preparing to build an air base with a concrete runway long enough for fighter jets to take off and land.

Plans published on the website of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation are thought to show the proposed design.

China’s island building is aimed at addressing a serious deficit.

Other countries that claim large chunks of the South China Sea - Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia - all control real islands.

But China came very late to this party and missed out on all the good real estate.

Beijing only took control of Johnson South Reef in 1988 after a bloody battle with Vietnam that left 70 Vietnamese sailors dead. Hanoi has never forgiven Beijing.

Since then China has shied away from direct military confrontation.

But now Beijing has decided it is time to move, to assert its claim and to back it up by creating new facts on the ground - a string of island bases and an unsinkable aircraft carrier, right in the middle of the South China Sea."

Continue reading on the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_8701/index.html

Comments are closed.
    Photo of U.S. Navy and Singaporean ships in the South China Sea, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

    Author

    Posts managed by Tom Miller and Leah Johnston

    Archives

    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

© 2014 Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability