Construction are seen on Subi Reef in the Spratly islands, in the disputed South China Sea in this July 24, 2016 satellite image released by the Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) to Reuters on August 9, 2016.
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The New York Times tactfully suggests these new satellite images “cast doubt on China’s vow not to militarize the disputed islands”.
In July, President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte said his country would send Ramos a special envoy to China to discuss the conflict over territorial dispute in the South China Sea. Small hangars are being built across the length of the runway.
The photos – taken in June and July, were collected by Washington-based research organization the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) – illustrate the construction at Fiery Cross, Subic and Mischief Reefs. The largest hangers could accommodate the Y-20 and IL-76 transport planes, IL-78 refueling tanker, and KJ-2000 surveillance aircraft.
“They are far thicker than you would build for any civilian objective”, Gregory Poling, director of CSIS’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, told the New York Times, which first reported on the new images.
Poling said the appearance of the reinforced hangers was not surprising since they’re sitting at the end of runways larger than any non-military objective would require.
MIT professor M. Taylor Fravel said, “China has given itself the option to use the reefs as military facilities, but has not decided yet to what degree it is going to use them”.
Experts said that although the proposal by the envoy, former Philippines president Fidel Ramos, to improve economic and tourism links might be considered by China, the Philippines’ attitude toward the arbitration ruling on the South China Sea remains the key to restoring ties. Tokyo, which administers and claims ownership over three of the Senkaku islets-Uotsuri, Kitakojima and Minamikojima-has been locked in a longstanding dispute with Beijing over the area, which is also claimed by Taiwan.
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This latest act of apparent militarization demonstrates that China may be preparing to violate the promise President Xi Jinping made last September that “China does not intend to pursue militarization” in the Nansha Islands, China’s name for the Spratly Islands. China says it has sovereignty over the area. Japan formally protested to China over the weekend, accusing Beijing of installing radar on an offshore gas platform in the East China Sea and of sending fishing and coast-guard vessels into waters around disputed islands there.
