The United States has urged against the militarisation of the South China Sea, following the rapid land reclamation by China on several disputed reefs through dredging, and building air fields and port facilities. But it said till date such requests have not resulted in Google blurring images.
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The Taiwanese Defense Ministry has not made the objective of Itu Aba public, claiming confidentiality, but defense experts in the country believe the structure of the installation implies that it is an artillery base.
Satellite images used on Google Earth and Google Maps come from third-party providers, which Google purchases for use in its mapping system, according to the search giant.
This resulted in the Philippines bringing Beijing before the Hague, where an worldwide tribunal condemned Beijing’s actions, finding that there was no legal basis for China’s land claim. Taiwan uses almost the same basis to call the sea spanning 3.5 million square kilometers (1.4 million square miles) its own.
There are concerns that they can further exacerbate tensions in the South China Sea, a contested waterway on which China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei lay claims.
Taiping is the sea’s largest of about 500 islets, and Taiwan may be nervous about other claimants seeing what’s there, analysts say.
He said: “I think it will definitely be for military purposes”.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected the ruling, as well as as the legitimacy of the court, calling it “null and void”.
This step was taken after a few local media published the images on Itu Aba. (1000 miles) south of Taiwan, March 23, 2016.
Under the pre-condition of protecting military secrets and security, we have requested that Google blur images of important military facilities. The arbitration court said it should not offer such a zone. The Director-General of Taiwan’s coast guard, Lee Chung-wei, informed the parliament that “Google had been notified about concealing the structures”.
China is also leery of Taiwan’s offshore activities as relations between the two old political rivals have slipped since President Tsai Ing-wen took office in Taipei in May advocating a cautious approach to the Communist superpower.
“It’s hard to see what they’re trying to achieve in asking Google to blur it though”, Hoare said.
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Fears over possible military confrontation in the area have grown since an global tribunal ruling in July which rejected Beijing’s sweeping claims to nearly all of the South China Sea – even waters approaching coasts of the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations. “The move by the government is to try to balance this negative image”.
