Dramatic new satellite imagery demonstrating China’s efforts to reclaim land and construct facilities in the South China Sea has prompted concern among policy makers in Washington. This is as it should be—at stake is more than just a handful of isolated and obscure reefs and islands. Beijing’s bold moves are testament to its expansive claims of sovereignty far from its shores and a willingness to risk heightened tensions with its neighbors and the United States. They also signal the need for America and its Asian partners to enhance security ties.
Photos and reporting from IHS Jane’s and the Center for Strategic and International Studies show what observers in the region have complained about for months: China has expanded several features in the South China Sea in ways that enable it to better project force and defend its contested claims. It has built an artificial island and helipad on Hughes Reef, reclaimed land at Johnson South Reef, erected an antiaircraft tower on Gaven Reef and may be building an airstrip at Fiery Cross Reef. Together, the land reclamation and construction in the past year represent another attempt by Beijing to shift the regional order in a direction favoring its narrowly construed national interests.
Its neighbors should be worried. Where these expanded outposts today consist of isolated buildings and airstrips, they could tomorrow host destroyers, antiaircraft and missile batteries—or help enforce an air defense identification zone akin to the one Beijing announced for the East China Sea in late 2013. Combined with other recent moves, such as the Chinese oil rig placed last year in waters off Vietnam, or Beijing’s standoff with the Philippine navy two years ago near Scarborough Shoal, it suggests an increasing Chinese appetite to enforce its claim to nearly all of the South China Sea.
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