Over the last few months, China has been quietly and quickly building an island in disputed waters off the coast of Vietnam that will help Beijing continue to dominate one of the most crucial waterways in the world. China claims about 90 percent of the South China Sea, including parts that are also claimed by several Southeast Asian countries.
Satellite imagery going back to November shows Chinese dredgers building a crescent-shaped island on Antelope Reef in the Paracels, a cluster of islands and reefs where China, Taiwan and Vietnam have competing claims.
By April, the edges of the island had been shaped and jetties, a helipad and unpaved roads were visible. It was almost twice the size of New York’s Central Park and appeared to still be under construction.
Analysts say that given its size and the ongoing expansion, Antelope Reef is likely to become one of China’s largest military outposts in the region. Such islands typically have airstrips, radar, electronic warfare facilities and missile bunkers. The bases support China’s Navy and Air Force, helping them operate farther from China’s mainland. China’s Coast Guard and maritime militia, made up of thousands of civilian fishing boats that help assert Beijing’s presence in the waters, use them too.
The artificial island took shape rapidly
Analysts tracking China’s island-building activities were surprised to see the new construction because China already had several outposts in contested waters and had largely stopped major construction of such artificial islands.
“The strategic logic of it is not super obvious,” said Harrison Prétat, deputy director and fellow with the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The sense was they don’t need anything else,” he said.
Between 2013 and 2017, China built or expanded more than 20 military outposts in the South China Sea that are able to house troops. That included three larger military bases across the Spratly Islands — a chain more than 900 miles from the Chinese mainland, but within 300 miles of the Philippine coast — and one in the Paracels. The island-building campaign, which was unprecedented in its scope and speed, prompted international condemnation and damaged China’s ties with its Southeast Asian neighbors as well as the United States.
Mr. Prétat said the latest construction could be a response to Vietnam, which has for the last two years reclaimed land and built military facilities on the islets that it controls in the Spratlys.
More important may be that compared with his predecessors, President Trump appears to be less focused on deterring China’s militarization of the South China Sea. “I think there’s a larger question of: Did they think they could get away with it?” Mr. Prétat said.
Antelope Reef is now one of China’s biggest islands in the region, similar in size to its largest outpost on Mischief Reef in the Spratlys.
Vietnam claims the entirety of the Paracels, which have been under Beijing’s control since China seized them in 1974. Hanoi has protested China’s construction at Antelope as “completely illegal and invalid.”
But Beijing insists that the Paracels are China’s “inherent territory.” Asked about the buildup at Antelope Reef last month, Lin Jian, a spokesman with China’s foreign ministry, said that any construction was simply aimed at “improving living and working conditions on the islands and growing the local economy.”