Staking its claim: Beijing building third airstrip 3,000 metres long in contested South China Sea, expert claims
The photographs reportedly taken for Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank on September 8 show construction on Mischief Reef, one of several artificial islands China has created in the Spratly archipelago.
China appears to be building a third airstrip in contested territory in the South China Sea, a US expert said on Monday, citing satellite photographs taken last week.
The photographs reportedly taken for Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank on September 8 show construction on Mischief Reef, one of several artificial islands China has created in the Spratly archipelago.
The images show a rectangular area with a retaining wall, 3,000 meters long, matching similar work by China on two other reefs, Subi and Fiery Cross, said Greg Poling, director of CSIS’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI).
Read more: China’s land reclamation in South China Sea grows, claims Pentagon report
“Clearly, what we have seen is going to be a 3,000m airstrip and we have seen some more work on what is clearly going to be some port facilities for ships,” he said.
Security experts say the strip would be long enough to accommodate most Chinese military aircraft, giving Beijing greater reach into the heart of maritime Southeast Asia, where it has competing claims with several countries.
News of the work comes ahead of a visit to Washington next week by Chinese President Xi Jinping. US worries about China’s increasingly assertive territorial claims are expected to be high on the agenda.
A spokesman for the US Defence Department, Commander Bill Urban, declined to comment specifically on Poling’s assessment, but repeated U.S. calls for a halt to land reclamation, construction and militarization of South China Sea outposts to “ease tensions and create space for diplomatic solutions.”