China accelerates land reclamation in disputed islands: Pentagon

[Little Tich]

Source: Yahoo! News / Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China embarked upon extensive land reclamation efforts at five outposts in the disputed Spratly Islands last year, adding huge amounts of terrain to bolster its civil and military presence in an area claimed by rivals, a new Pentagon report said on Friday.

Chinese building and land-filling efforts have accelerated this year, with the total acreage added to the outposts in the South China Sea growing from 500 in December to about 2,000 today, a U.S. defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Spratly chain, where China has built at least one previously submerged reef into an island, is claimed by at least three other countries: the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia.

"We do not support South China Sea land reclamation efforts by any party," the official said. "However, the pace and scale of China's land reclamation in recent years dwarfs that of any other claimant. China has expanded the acreage on outposts it occupies by some 400 times."



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/china-accelerating-land-reclamation-disputed-spratlys-pentagon-183620084.html

[cstanleytech]

1. If they want to waste time and money on this BS thats fine by me, its not like its going to matter

once the ocean levels rise.

[Igel]

2. Yes, yes it will.

Because it will give them jurisdiction over that part of the ocean floor, with ancillary privileges and rights on the ocean surface above it.

They don't want the acreage for housing or agriculture. They want the thousands of square miles of ocean that having a speck of land there grants them. And the oil and gas reserves under those thousands of square miles of ocean.

They also want the possible projection of force that this entails. Immediately SE Asia, which China regards as its sole sphere of influence, would have Chinese territorial waters start just a few miles off its shores. Hemmed in from the north and east, with other countries' lands and waters to the south and west, intimidation isn't just easy it's entailed.

Largely it's the same with the Crimea. Yes, Russia got a bit of land. But it also simultaneously gave it undisputed right to where much of the Southstream pipeline was going to be laid, it gave it ownership of the gas fields that are offshore. It's not by accident that within a couple of weeks of taking over the Crimea the Russian state gas company had its men out in the field in the Black Sea, and shortly after that they said they'd be curtailing some development in Siberia. If your market's Europe, Black Sea gas is better than Siberian gas. And if you might lose that territory again in 20 years, it's better to use up its resources before you lose it so nobody else benefits.

Russia also gets the same kind of "hemming in effect" for EU/NATO countries in Central Europe that China gets with SE Asia. It considers those countries to be its proper sphere of influence, nations and ethnicities that it properly has control and intimidation rights over.


When the US does something, the first cry is, "It's for the oil!" And when the sphere-of-influence Monroe Doctrine is mentioned, or the idea that the US should have some effect on nations in its backyard like, oh, Cuba or Grenada or even Nicaragua or Honduras comes up, there's a deep shudder and groans of "imperialism."

This asymmetry is called "fair." Just as self-flagellation during Ashura is the only proper approach for any American contestant in a beauty contest, and drinking one's self into a stupor is the sine qua non for a spelling bee.

[cstanleytech]

3. They're welcome to try that line of BS as well but I suspect anyone

with any real integrity will never buy it.

[Sunlei]

4. dredging sand and pile it into a concrete retained mountain. kill off the reefs & seafloor to steal

the sea territory from the weaker neighbor countries, just like Russia stole the land from Ukraine.