China Lake: One of China’s Reef Constructions Can Hold 24 Combat Aircraft

China has completed the construction of a variety of military assets in the Vietnamese East Sea, assets that allow it to deploy fighter jets and missile launchers at a moment’s notice and provide it expanded surveillance capabilities.
by FRANCES MARTEL

Fiery Cross Reef, South China Sea
The images show completed “naval, air, radar, and defensive facilities” in the Spratly Island chain, particularly on three reefs China has invested in turning into artificial islands capable of holding combat aircraft and surveillance technology, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
The three most developed locations, according to the CSIS report, are Subi, Mischief, and Fiery Cross Reefs in the Spratly Islands. 

“Beijing can now deploy military assets, including combat aircraft and mobile missile launchers, to the Spratly Islands at any time,” the report notes. 

Among the most notable developments since the last such report is the completion of hangar construction on Fiery Cross Reef, which allows China to “accommodate 24 combat aircraft and four larger planes (such as ISR, transport, refueling, or bomber aircraft).”
The CSIS publishes such satellite images and reports periodically. 

In February, it warned that Woody Island, the largest of the Paracel Islands, was home to “an airstrip, hangars, and a deployment of HQ-9 surface-to-air missile batteries,” as well as the beginnings of seven new harbors.
China claims most of the South China Sea in a region within what China calls the “nine-dash line,” a drawing Chinese officials argue proves their ownership of the region. 

Both the Paracel and Spratly Island chains, as well as other notable formations like the Benham Rise and Scarborough Shoal, fall within China’s “nine-dash line” border.
This border violates the territorial integrity of Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, and Malaysia. 

Last year, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague ruled that China’s claims were unfounded and it must cease its constructions in the region immediately. 

China responded by calling the ruling a joint U.S.-Japanese conspiracy and refusing to abide by it.

Responding to the CSIS report on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying repeated the false claims to the South China Sea the Hague debunked last year. 

“China has stated many times that the Spratly Islands are its inherent territory,” she said.
A week ago, Li Keqiang insisted that China’s use of the region was not an attempt at colonization. “China’s facilities, Chinese islands and reefs, are primarily for civilian purposes and, even if there is a certain amount of defense equipment or facilities, it is for maintaining the freedom of navigation,” he said, responding to concerns of expansionism.
The Philippines, which arguably has the most territory to lose between the Spratly Islands and the Scarborough Shoal, has taken a demure approach to addressing the situation since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in June 2016. 

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said. 

“What do you want me to do? Declare war against China?” Duterte asked in frustration this week, responding to critics that he has responded to China’s growing presence in the region too slowly.
Duterte has also chastised the United States for not doing enough to keep China from developing assets in the Philippine territory, contradicting his own demands to see the United States reduce its military presence in the Philippines.
The Philippine Inquirer lamented Duterte’s attitude, calling it “disheartening” and a “puzzling display of defeatism” in an opinion piece this week.
Duterte’s government nonetheless appears to have accepted the delivery of two Japanese surveillance aircraft on Tuesday, meant to patrol the South China Sea. 

According to the Agence-France Presse, the two are part of a five-part package of Beechcraft TC-90 planes, which Japanese officials deemed a responsible move to curbing China’s expansion in the region. 

Duterte has also called for the construction of “structures” in Philippine territory in the South China Sea, though Manila has not clarified what the president meant by this.

China Lake

Aircraft hangars, radar installed on artificial islands

• Hangars can accommodate combat aircraft or surveillance planes
• Militarization will help China establish an Air Defense Zone

By Ben Westcott

Dozens of aircraft hangars and high-end radar capabilities on China's man-made islands in the South China Sea are almost operational, according to new satellite imagery released by a US-based think tank.
The new facilities will further establish China's military dominance over the highly contested region, experts told CNN, and could help China establish a controversial Air Defense Identification Zone in the area.
Images released by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, AMTI, taken in early March, show nearly completed defense infrastructure on three of China's largest artificial islands in the disputed Spratly chain: Fiery Cross, Mischief and Subi reefs.
Each of the islands has new aircraft hangers, capable of holding 24 military aircraft, as well as several larger hangars that can hold bombers or surveillance planes.
Though completion of these facilities in early 2017 was expected, the question remains: Where does China go from here?
"I mean, you don't build facilities like that and then not use them," Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Yusof Ishak Institute, told CNN.
A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said Tuesday she wasn't aware of the report's details but reiterated the Spratly Islands were Chinese territory.
"Whether we decide to deploy or not deploy relevant military equipment, it is within our scope of sovereignty. It's our right to self-defense and self-preservation as recognized by international law," Hua Chunying said.

A satellite photo of China's artificial island on Fiery Cross Reef, taken on March 9, and highlighted by AMTI.

New hangers, radar almost complete
Fiery Cross, Mischief and Subi reefs are the largest of seven artificial islands built by China in the Spratlys.
China claims the majority of the South China Sea as its territory, despite overlapping claims by a number of other Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines and Vietnam.



Four bigger hangars have already been completed on Subi Reef, AMTI said, as well as another four on Fiery Cross Reef. 

Hangars to accommodate five larger planes, such as bombers, were in the final stages of construction on Mischief Reef.
"China's three military bases in the Spratlys and another on Woody Island in the Paracels will allow Chinese military aircraft to operate over nearly the entire South China Sea," AMTI said in a statement.
In addition to the hangars, new radar domes are in various stages of construction on each artificial island, about three arrays on each reef. 

Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief reefs now all also have shelters for mobile missiles launchers, according to AMTI.

Subi Reef, taken on March 14, with new Chinese military infrastructure highlighted, courtesy of AMTI.

Air Defense Zone planned
The establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone, dubbed ADIZ, in the South China Sea has long been considered a possibility by analysts, especially in the wake of July's international court decision against China's maritime claims.
China declared its East China Sea ADIZ in November 2013, antagonizing Japan and the United States, who both said they didn't recognize it.
A similar zone in the South China Sea could rapidly increase tensions in the region, experts said.

New radar arrays and an aircraft hanger freshly completed at China's artificial island on Fiery Cross Reef, according to AMTI

"The worry has to be that if China bases its military aircraft (in the South China Sea), they could fly up and challenge anyone's military aircraft or civilian aircraft if they wanted to," said Carl Thayer, regional security analyst and emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales.
China had very rarely enforced its previous ADIZ, and any new zone in the south sea would start out as mostly "symbolic," Storey said.
"And the US will ignore it as it did with the East China Sea ADIZ," he said. 

"The interesting question is really how the Southeast Asian states will respond."

Planes yet to arrive
Though the infrastructure is almost completed, no military aircraft has been deployed to the islands yet, Thayer and Storey said.
China's next step would be to very slowly deploy planes to the artificial islands to gauge the local and US response, Thayer said.
"What China's going to do is habituate," he said. 

"You land one there, and then you fly it out, report it in the state media and see what the reaction is."
"Then you add two or three or four, land one and repair it, see what the response is," he said.
South China Sea tensions generally had waned in the past nine months, since Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte took power and sought a closer relationship with China, Storey said.
If China deploys aircraft, "there will be pro forma protests from certain countries, Vietnam in particular. There will be grumbling from certain ASEAN members," he said, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. 

"Then, over a period of time, this will become the norm."

Chinese Aggressions

China's man-made South China Sea islands nearly complete
By Christopher Bodeen

BEIJING — A report from a U.S. think tank says China has nearly completed construction work on three man-made islands in the South China Sea, giving it the ability to deploy combat aircraft and other military assets to the disputed region.
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies analyzed recent satellite photos and concluded that runways, aircraft hangers, radar sites and hardened surface-to-air missile shelters have either been finished or are nearing completion.
The report, released Monday, appears to be the most conclusive indication yet that China is using its island-building project to give teeth to its claim over almost the entire South China Sea and its islands and reefs.
The islands in the study — Subi, Mischief and Fiery Cross reefs — are part of the Spratly chain, which is claimed in whole or in part by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia  and Brunei.
On each of the islands, China has constructed enough concrete hangers for 24 fighter jets and four or five larger planes such as bombers or early warning aircraft, CSIS reported.
China already uses an existing airfield on Woody Island in the similarly disputed Paracel chain, located to the north, where it has maintained mobile HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles for more than a year and deployed anti-ship cruise missiles on at least one occasion, CSIS said.
The airfields and advanced surveillance and early warning radars will allow China's military to operate over virtually the entire South China Sea.
"Beijing can now deploy military assets, including combat aircraft and mobile missile launchers, to the Spratly Islands at any time," the report said.
China's creation of seven man-made islands in the South China Sea has drawn strong criticism from the U.S. and others, who accuse Beijing of further militarizing the region and altering geography to bolster its claims.
China says its island construction is mainly for civilian purposes, particularly to increase safety for ships that carry an estimated $5 trillion worth of goods through the waterway each year. 

It has also provided reassurances that it will not interfere with freedom of navigation or overflight, although questions remain as to whether that includes military ships and aircraft.
Commenting on the report, a senior Philippine defense official said the construction China has carried out on the islands "belies a clearly military purpose contrary to Chinese public pronouncements that it is civilian in nature."
That raises the likelihood of further militarization and restrictions on air and sea traffic, posing a "clear and present danger to the present regional security balance," said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters on the matter.
China has refused to confirm speculation over whether it plans to declare an air defense identification zone over the South China Sea as it has done already over international airspace in the East China Sea. 

The U.S. has refused to recognize the East China Sea zone, which requires aircraft to declare their flight plans, identify themselves to Chinese traffic monitors and follow their instructions. 

National Insecurity

US reliance on China for critical metals is being ignored
By John Moody

The United States has made no progress to decrease its dependence on China for metals and materials that are critical to our national security and defense, according to a narrowly-circulated report from the Department of Defense.
The document, dated January 2017 and titled, “Strategic and Critical Materials Operations Report to Congress,” confirms the widespread fear among industry experts that the U.S. remains dangerously incapable of mining and producing so-called rare earths. 

Those 17 metals and elements are needed for, among other things, the Pentagon’s new F-35 fighter jet, laser-guided missiles and catapults that launch fighter jets from aircraft carriers.
Those same materials, which the United States imports almost exclusively from China, are also used for consumer goods such as smartphones, GPS systems, automobile electronics and computer and television screens.
With President Trump vowing to deal more aggressively with China on trade matters, possible Chinese export restrictions on critical metals like rare earths have again been raised.
Our perilous dependence on Chinese-produced rare earths is likely to be a topic of discussion when the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources meets Tuesday. 

Among the witnesses expected to testify is an associate director of the U.S. Geological Survey, the government agency that released a report showing that the U.S. is 100 percent reliant on foreign producers of rare earths. 

The last American rare earth production facility, Molycorp, closed in 2015.
Also expected to testify are representatives of mining and energy companies that hope Trump will encourage domestic production of rare earths and other critical metals, which exist in abundance under American soil.
Those producers have been frustrated by eight years of inaction by the Obama administration, which largely ignored America’s rare earth dependence because of environmental concerns and because those materials could be imported from China more cheaply than they could be produced domestically.
In 2012, the Obama administration brought a complaint against China to the World Trade Organization, charging it was restricting exports of rare earths, as well as tungsten and molybdenum. When, in 2015, the WTO ruled in favor of the United States, China removed its quotas. 

It also exposed American reliance on Beijing exports of rare earths and rang alarm bells in the defense establishment.
“The WTO allows appeals when issues of national security enter into consideration,” said Anthony Marchese, chairman of Texas Mineral Resources Corp., a company that has pending rare earth projects in the United States. 

“The Obama administration was effectively hamstrung since any mention of national security concerns would have strengthened China’s position.”
The danger of America’s dependence is hard to overstate. 

“What would you say if you blanked out the words rare earth and said, ‘How would you feel about being totally dependent on a product from a potential adversary whose use is ubiquitous in your defense industry and everyday products like smartphone?” says Marchese.
So far, no one has the rarest notion of how to answer that question. 

Save a Dog, Eat a Chinese

LA County leaders poised to condemn China’s dog meat festival
By Susan Abram

Dogs in a cage during the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in 2016.

Marc Ching, 38, is the founder of the Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation based in Sherman Oaks. He has made several trips to China and Cambodia to end dog meat sales and festivals. China, November,2015. 

With the annual Yulin dog meat festival approaching in the southern region of China, Los Angeles County Supervisors will consider Tuesday joining a national effort to pressure the government there to stop the practice of slaughtering the canines for consumption and trade.
Supervisor Hilda Solis introduced the motion to request that county officials craft a letter in support of a growing movement to urge China to end the dog meat trade and the festival. 

In January, a resolution was introduced by Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings that asks the U.S. government to condemn the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in the Guangxi region because of extreme animal cruelty.
“Los Angeles County is home to millions of people who care deeply about preventing animal abuse and suffering,” Solis wrote in her motion. 

“On behalf of our residents, I ask the Board of Supervisors to join me in condemning the Yulin dog meat festival, and the rampant abuse and torture of dogs and cats for human consumption in both China and South Korea.”
The news that county officials want to support the national effort was a welcomed surprise to Marc Ching, who began his Sherman Oaks-based Animal Hope & Wellness Foundation to rescue abused dogs from the meat trade throughout Asia.
“I think it’s great,” Ching said. 

“The more awareness the better.”
Ching, 38, was on his way to South Korea on Monday to speak with the government there about that country’s dog meat trade. 

It will mark his 12th trip to an Asian country where dogs are tortured before slaughtered then sold.
10,000 dogs are skinned alive during the 10-day Yulin festival, which begins on June 21. 

The animals, some of them pets that have been stolen, are then butchered and eaten as a way to mark the summer solstice, according to reports to Solis’ motion. 

Ching has rescued some dogs and has photographed them in overcrowded cages during the Yulin festival.
His work and the efforts of activists has sparked a global backlash against China amid wide scale awareness of the practice. 

Resentment toward animal activists also has grown among Chinese who eat dog meat, because among some, it is believe to have medicinal purposes. 

Ching said he’s often told that as an American, he’s out to change tradition and that he should focus his efforts on helping exploited women or children.
“Even though I get criticized, or even though they might say you’re Chinese, your ancestors grew up with something like this, I say in time we changed,” he said. 

“While I’m proud to be American and proud to be Chinese, I’m also proud to be human, and in time people become more compassionate. We learn what not to do and what we should do. Tradition cannot be an excuse for torturing anything.”
Ching said slavery was an example of a tradition that was changed in the U.S. Constitution.
“In China, they are living outdated mystic values, and they can change those things they once believed in that are no longer relevant.”

“It’s important for everyone to get involved in the anti-animal abuse and torture movement,” Solis said in an e-mailed statement Monday. 

“This isn’t about a cultural difference. This is about pets being stolen and slaughtered in an inhumane way.

Chinese Aggressions

China can deploy warplanes on artificial islands any time: Think tank

Reuters

Missile destroyer Changsha returns to a port in Sanya City, south China's Hainan Province, March 7, 2017, after a high sea drill that passed through the South China Sea.

China appears to have largely completed major construction of military infrastructure on artificial islands it has built in the South China Sea and can now deploy combat planes and other military hardware there at any time, a U.S. think tank said on Monday.
The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), part of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the work on Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief Reefs in the Spratly Islands included naval, air, radar and defensive facilities.
The think tank cited satellite images taken this month, which its director, Greg Poling, said showed new radar antennas on Fiery Cross and Subi.
"So look for deployments in the near future," he said.
China has denied U.S. charges that it is militarizing the South China Sea, although last week Li Keqiang said defense equipment had been placed on islands in the disputed waterway to maintain "freedom of navigation."
AMTI said China's three air bases in the Spratlys and another on Woody Island in the Paracel chain further north would allow its military aircraft to operate over nearly the entire South China Sea, a key global trade route that Beijing claims most of.
Several neighboring states have competing claims in the sea, which is widely seen as a potential regional flashpoint.
The think tank said advanced surveillance and early-warning radar facilities at Fiery Cross, Subi, and Cuarteron Reefs, as well as Woody Island, and smaller facilities elsewhere gave it similar radar coverage.
It said China had installed HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles at Woody Island more than a year ago and had deployed anti-ship cruise missiles there on at least one occasion.
It had also constructed hardened shelters with retractable roofs for mobile missile launchers at Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief and enough hangars at Fiery Cross for 24 combat aircraft and three larger planes, including bombers.
U.S. officials told Reuters last month that China had finished building almost two dozen structures on Subi, Mischief and Fiery Cross that appeared designed to house long-range surface-to-air missiles.
In his Senate confirmation hearing in January, new U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said China should be denied access to islands it had built up in the South China Sea.
He subsequently softened his language, saying that in the event of an unspecified "contingency," the United States and its allies "must be capable of limiting China's access to and use of" those islands to pose a threat.
In recent years, the United States has conducted a series of what it calls freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea, raising tensions with Beijing.

Axis of Evil

Australian government suspends extradition treaty with China
By NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE

BEIJING — Facing a revolt from members of his own party, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has shelved an extradition treaty with Beijing, in a major rebuke to the trustworthiness of China’s justice system.
The decision will be closely watched in Ottawa, which agreed last fall to begin talks toward a similar deal with China, although officials have more recently cast doubt on the success of such talks so long as Beijing continues the extra-legal interrogation of corruption suspects.
In Canberra, the Prime Minister’s Office pulled the treaty early Tuesday after it became clear it would not survive a vote in the country’s Senate. 

A spokesman expressed disappointment, blaming opposition parties.
The imminent ratification of the extradition pact, the first between China and a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, had sparked new debate in Australia about the merits of closer ties with a Chinese judicial system the international community has condemned for its use of torture and susceptibility to political interference.
Australian opposition to the extradition deal brought together a coalition of bitter political enemies, as well as some of Mr. Turnbull’s own backbench and former prime minister Tony Abbott.
“In my judgment, China’s legal system has to evolve further before the Australian government and people could be confident that those before it would receive justice according to law,” Mr. Abbott told The Australian on Monday.
Australia’s government introduced a legislative instrument to ratify the treaty on March 20, the final step before placing it into effect. 

Such an instrument is not a bill and does not require a vote to pass – unless legislators vote to disallow it.
But Mr. Turnbull’s Liberal government does not possess a majority in the Australian Senate and Cory Bernardi, a senator who recently defected from the Prime Minister’s party, led an effort to kill the treaty. 

He put forward a motion to disallow that was scheduled for debate Wednesday.
By Tuesday morning, however, it became clear that sufficient opposition had gathered to defeat the treaty, and the government backed down. 

In a statement, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the government intends to “continue our discussions with the opposition,” citing “the importance of this treaty to Australia’s national interest.”
Signed in 2007, the treaty contained provisions against extraditing people at risk of torture or execution. 

But Mr. Bernardi, citing China’s 99.9 per cent conviction rate, raised questions about the fairness of Chinese courts and doubts about Australia’s ability to enforce promises not to mistreat suspects.
“We Conservatives will remain vigilant that no such treaty should be ratified by the Australian Parliament until the rule of law improves in China,” he said Tuesday. 

Australia’s “economic future is linked to China. But you don’t suspend your own internal judgment, or your own national sense of righteousness, simply for economic reasons,” he said in an interview Monday.
In Australia’s fractured Senate, Mr. Bernardi was able to play to smaller parties and independent candidates to block the treaty, despite a last-minute attempt by the Prime Minister to defend it.
It “needs to be ratified,” Mr. Turnbull said Monday, pointing to the recent interception of a Chinese shipment of more than $100-million worth of methamphetamine destined for Australia. 

Without legal co-operation between the two countries, the Prime Minister said, those drugs “would have been on the streets in Australia destroying Australian lives.”
But the international community has grown increasingly sharp in its condemnation of China’s exercise of justice.
Reports from the U.S. State Department and the United Nations Committee on Torture have called torture a deeply entrenched feature of the Chinese system, in contravention of the country’s own laws.
In February, the Canadian embassy in Beijing signed a letter to the Chinese government with representatives of 10 other countries to jointly express concern about what they called “credible claims of torture” of detained human-rights lawyers.
China also maintains an extensive extra-legal system, known as shuanggui, which interrogates graft suspects without arresting them, and uses sleep deprivation and other tactics of psychological torment to extract confessions.
In response to a Globe and Mail report detailing abuses in that system, a senior Canadian official said this weekend that a comprehensive extradition treaty with China is unlikely to succeed if those practices continue.
In Australia, meanwhile, the extradition treaty is unlikely to be revived unless the government can respond to objections raised against it, “which in effect would require aspects of the treaty to be renegotiated,” said Donald Rothwell, a top Australian international law scholar at Australian National University.
Renegotiation “is possible in theory, but I cannot speculate on whether the Turnbull government would seek to expend the political and diplomatic capital to do so,” he said.
Ratifying the extradition treaty would have amounted to a show of faith in Chinese justice, said Stuart Clark, a litigator who was president of the Law Council of Australia last year when it published a 30-page report opposing the treaty.
“Australia should not be endorsing, tacitly or otherwise, that system by allowing people to be returned in circumstances where they can’t be guaranteed a fair trial,” he said.
Shelving the treaty, he said, is “the right decision. There were not appropriate protections. And what is meant to be offered up as a fair trial in China is inconsistent with the concept in Australia.”