Chinese Aggressions

South China Sea Photos Suggest a Military Building Spree by Beijing
By MEGAN SPECIA and MIKKO TAKKUNEN

Subi (Zamora) Reef in November.

China has spent years building military outposts on a group of contested islands in the South China Sea — a project that has left the country at odds with many of its neighbors and the United States.
First, there was the dredging, in which ships sucked sediment from the seabed and pumped it atop formerly undeveloped reefs. 

Then came the buildings — once said to be for civilian purposes but which analysts now say are small military installations — followed quickly by international uproar.
But the building continued. 

Now, some of the islands that are part of the group known as the Spratlys, where China began large-scale development in 2013, have been transformed from barren reefs into military outposts, as seen for the first time in great detail in a series of new photos.
The images, which were obtained by The Philippine Daily Inquirer from an unnamed source, offer the clearest views yet of the scale of construction and the nature of the military development.
The Pentagon and the Philippine military both declined to comment on the images. 

The New York Times has been unable to independently verify these photos, which were released with annotations that indicate they were taken between June 2016 and December 2017.
But experts who monitor development in the South China Sea say the photos show the islands in dispute and are consistent with satellite imagery of the development that they have been monitoring for years.

CreditPhilippine Daily InquirerPhoto

Conor Cronin, a research associate at the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the buildings in the new images were at the same scale as the structures in the photographs his group regularly assesses from the region. 

The initiative monitors development in an area long shrouded in secrecy.
What’s striking about these images, he said, is that for the first time, significant surface-level details can be seen.
“These are kind of rare shots to see publicly,” Mr. Cronin said, noting that the detailed views of the island, seen from a much closer angle than the satellite level, were insightful. 

“It’s another indication of how well established these facilities are and kind of the capabilities they are going to have.”


The development of the Spratly Islands has ignited outrage from neighbors that also lay claim to this portion of the South China Sea. 

To varying degrees, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia all stake claim to parts of the area.
While tensions have eased somewhat as China negotiates an agreement with other players on a code of conduct for the region — which seems to allow economic development without resolving the underlying sovereignty disputes — the unabated pace of construction could stir fresh tensions.
Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the photos provided a unique perspective. 

She said she believed, particularly given the annotations on the images, that they were most likely taken by a military aircraft.
“What is really quite stunning is how clear you can see in these aerial photos how much has been built,” Ms. Glaser said. 

“It’s really up close and personal.”
A recent assessment from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative of satellite imagery revealed that China had developed 72 acres, both above and below ground, in the South China Sea in 2017 alone. Since the construction first began in 2013, China has developed more than 3,200 acres across the area.
More recently, the Chinese have turned their attention from dredging and reclaiming land to building airstrips, radar and communications facilities and hangars.



On Mischief Reef, which was once largely underwater, 1,379 acres have been developed by China. The latest images from the island purportedly show a nearly two-mile runway and concrete building. Analysts say it is only a matter of time before Chinese military planes begin landing there.
“They are going to begin to operate out of these runways and, I believe, start to actually store these aircraft, at least short term, in these hardened shelters,” Ms. Glaser said. 

“They built them for that purpose.”
China’s Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday that it would conduct training exercises with combat jets in the South China Sea, though it did not indicate whether any of the planes were destined for the islands.
Mischief Reef — known as Panganiban Reef in the Philippines — lies about 140 miles off the coast of the Philippines and was determined by an international tribunal in The Hague to be within Philippine territorial waters.



But the ruling has not stopped China.
The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative said in its most recent assessment of the island that construction was carried out on buildings covering 17 acres of Mischief Reef.
“This included underground storage for ammunition and other material, the completion of hangars and missile shelters, and new radar and communications arrays,” the organization wrote.
Similar details in the aerial photos point to the same conclusion.
While the negotiations over a code of conduct for development in the South China Sea with the 10-country Association of South East Asian Nations have stalled, China’s development continues.
“While they take forever to put this agreement together, China has not slowed in building up these bases,” Mr. Cronin said. 

“They are continuing apace.”

Chinese Aggressions

Stunning new pictures show the scope of Chinese building in the South China Sea
By Emily Rauhala and Olivier Laurent 

Subi Reef. 

BEIJING — Sometimes you’ve got to see it to truly believe it. 

That is certainly true of a remarkable set of pictures published by a Philippine newspaper this week.
For years now, we’ve read about Chinese land reclamation and building in the contested waters of the South China Sea — construction that has put Beijing at odds with many of its Asian neighbors, as well as the United States.

Subi reef. 

In 2016, an international tribunal ruled that China’s expansive maritime claims had no legal basis. But Beijing kept building, insisting repeatedly that it was all for civilian, not military, purposes.
Few outside China buy that. 

Foreign experts, most notably the people at the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, were left to scour grainy satellite images for proof. 

Finally, we have better pictures.

Subi reef. 

The Philippine Daily Inquirer this week published a set of exclusive photographs that show what China is up to in three dimensions and vivid color.
The images, which were given to the paper by an unknown individual, were reportedly shot between June and December 2017, from an estimated height of 1,500 meters (4,900 feet).

Mischief reef. 

“This is the most complete, detailed batch of aerial pics available of China’s [South China Sea] military outposts,” tweeted Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Johnson South reef.

While the buildings and boats seen in the photographs are not news, seeing them up-close is striking. In satellite images, bases, radars and runways look like fuzzy rectangles. 

In these pictures, they look like bases, radars and runways.
The pictures will not change China’s position, nor are they likely to shape the U.S. response. 

But for those following the conflict from a distance, they provide a revealing glimpse of what is happening on these distant rocks and reef — and it sure does not look civilian.

Fiery Cross reef. 

Take a look for yourself. 

And read more about the South China Sea conflict here.

Photos show Beijing’s militarisation of South China Sea in new detail

China accused of building ‘island fortresses’ as Filipino newspaper obtains images of strategic area
By Tom Phillips

Beijing has been accused of building “island fortresses” in the South China Sea after a newspaper in the Philippines obtained aerial photographs offering what experts called the most detailed glimpse yet of China’s militarisation of the strategic waterway.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer said the surveillance photographs – passed to its reporters by an unnamed source – had been mostly taken between June and December last year and showed Chinese construction activities across the disputed Spratly archipelago between the Philippines and Vietnam.
Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam have overlapping claims in the region.
The Inquirer said the images showed an “unrestrained” building campaign designed to project Chinese power across the resource-rich shipping route through which trillions of dollars of global trade flows each year.

Installations on Johnson South Reef.  

Some photographs show cargo ships and supply vessels, which the newspaper said appeared to be delivering construction materials to the China-controlled islands.
Others show runways, hangars, control towers, helipads and radomes as well as a series of multistorey buildings that China has built on reefs such as Fiery Cross, Subi, Mischief, McKennan, Johnson South, Gaven and Cuarteron.
The Inquirer described the reefs as “island fortresses”. 

Bonnie Glaser, an expert in Asia-Pacific security issues from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the images “the most complete, detailed batch of aerial pics available” of China’s military outposts in the South China Sea.
However, both Beijing and Manila sought to play down the significance of the images.
Ties between the two Asian countries have warmed since Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines president, took power in 2016 and set about forging a lucrative new alliance with China during a four-day state visit to Beijing.

Images from the Philippine Daily Inquirer showing Mischief Reef. 

Responding to questions about the photographs, the presidential spokesman, Harry Roque, told reporters: “[The region has] long been militarised. And the question is, what can we do?”
He reportedly added: “What do you want us to do? We cannot declare war.”
Opposition figures hit back, accusing Duterte’s administration of betraying their “sacred core duty” to defend their country’s territory.
Experts interviewed by China’s Communist party press also shrugged off the photographs, suggesting they showed mostly civilian installations.

Fiery Cross Reef. 

A Chinese expert, Zhuang Guotu, accused foreign journalists of “hyping” Beijing’s activities in the South China Sea, but added: “China has the right to build whatever it needs within its territory.” Zhuang claimed China’s military deployment was not for military expansion, but about defending its security and interests.
The photographs were published just a few weeks after a report claimed China had created military facilities about four times the size of Buckingham Palace on contested South China Sea islands.