Beijing finishes runway on South China Sea isle
BEIJING — In a move to assert its territorial claim over its islands in the South China Sea, Beijing has completed a runway for military aircraft on one island also claimed by Vietnam, Chinese state-run media reported.
The newly-built facility stretches across Yongxing Island said China’s Xinhua news agency.
The Xisha Islands, known as Paracels in English, is a group of islands, reefs, banks and other maritime features in the South China Sea.
It is controlled by China, and also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, with animosity between Beijing and Hanoi rising this year over Chinese construction and oil exploration there.
The building of the runway is Beijing’s latest physical assertion of control in the area, two years after it declared a city named Sansha centred on Woody Island to administer vast swathes of the South China Sea.
Vital shipping routes run through the waters and they are believed to sit atop vast oil and gas deposits. Parts of the South China Sea are also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
The Xinhua report gave few details about the runway, except to say it was completed on Yongxing Island, the largest of the Xisha islands with a land area of 2.6 sq km. Pictures accompanying the statement showed the runway running across the breadth of the island, with part of the airstrip surrounded by construction cranes and clear blue water.
“With the completion and continued improvements to the runway on Yongxing, military aircraft can be based in the Paracels and greatly improve Chinese defence capabilities in the Xisha and Nansha islands,” Xinhua said, using the Chinese names for the Paracels and Spratlys, a separate island chain.
China previously built a school on Woody Island for 40 children whose parents work there, the state-run media said in June.
The island’s main attractions are the Xisha Maritime Museum and military history museums.
China and Vietnam have had frequent run-ins over the disputed islands, with tensions running high when Beijing placed an oil rig in disputed waters near the Paracel islands in May, sparking deadly anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam. China removed the oil rig from the waters in July.