Commercial satellite photos taken Tuesday for the Center for Strategic and International Studies show that China is flattening, rolling and putting gravel on an area the size of a military runway on Subi Reef, a once-submerged shoal that Beijing has built up into an area suitable for a military base. The flattened area is about 200 feet wide and nearly 1.4 miles long but is expected to grow and be covered with asphalt, say China experts who have examined the satellite photos.
On Mischief Reef, China has also completed, and started pouring fill into, a retaining wall in a space nearly two miles long — part of a process that is identical to what was done earlier on Subi Reef and Woody Island, where an airfield has been completed, the experts say.
The new construction seems certain to strain the meeting between Xi and President Obama, whose national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, was recently in Beijing. The United States has urged China to stop work in the region, and Beijing said in August that it would halt reclamation. But the satellite photos show that construction continues.
While the Tuesday commercial satellite photos were taken for CSIS, a separate Sept. 3 satellite photo posted on the Diplomat news Web site Thursday evening showed the same developments.
“When the Chinese government said it had mainly finished the work, it clearly hadn’t,” said Michael J. Green, a senior vice president at CSIS and former senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush.
“This is a challenge for the White House,” Green added. “How do they talk about this? Do they say, ‘Don’t militarize these islands,’ knowing that the Chinese will do it anyway? Do they say, ‘Don’t continue construction,’ when it’s obvious that it will continue anyway?”
Green said Chinese officials have told him in private that they intend to militarize the reefs and islands with planes, antiaircraft weapons and naval vessels. He said that would allow the People’s Liberation Army air force to have “overlapping air control over the South China Sea, and not just from one airfield but from three.” He said that “it won’t stop the U.S. policy of asserting freedom of navigation, but it makes it a lot more complicated operation.”
The White House did not comment on September 11.
“We note China’s August statement that it has halted its reclamation. At the same time, China has also stated its intent to further construct facilities, including for the purpose of military defense,” said Cmdr. Bill Urban, a Pentagon spokesman. “It’s not clear to us that they’ve stopped, and we will continue to watch that situation very closely.”
But “the only way to ease tensions is to stop unilateral, destabilizing actions,” he added. “China’s stated intentions with its program, and continued construction, will not reduce tensions or lead to a meaningful diplomatic solution.”
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