Satellite images show rapid progress in building of runway suitable for military use on reclaimed parts of Fiery Cross reef in Spratly archipelago

China is making rapid progress in building an airstrip suitable for military use in contested territory in the South China Sea, according to new satellite images.

The facility, on reclaimed land around a reef, would be big enough for fighter jets and surveillance aircraft. IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly said images from Airbus Defence and Space, taken on 23 March, showed the runway on Fiery Cross reef in the disputed Spratly archipelago already stretched to 500m and had room to grow to six times that length. Paved sections of apron were also visible.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea in a complex dispute which also involves the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. Tensions have risen in recent years, due partly to growing interest in the area’s energy reserves and partly to broader anxieties about China’s rise and increasing assertiveness. The sea boasts valuable fisheries and is a crucial shipping route.



IHS Jane’s said that earlier images from another reef in the Spratlys showed reclamation work that could potentially create space for another 3,000 metre airstrip and that others suggested China was working to extend an existing airstrip in the Paracel Islands to the same length.



Barack Obama said last week that there were concerns Beijing was “using its sheer size and muscle to force countries into subordinate positions”. The US president added: “Just because the Philippines or Vietnam are not as large as China doesn’t mean that they can just be elbowed aside.”

Weeks before, the commander of the US Pacific fleet said China was creating “a great wall of sand with dredges and bulldozers”, raising “serious questions about [its] intentions”. This week, Admiral Samuel Locklear told a congressional hearing that China could potentially deploy radar and missile systems on its new islands.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A photograph from IHS Jane’s and Airbus of the runway under construction at Fiery Cross reef. Photograph: EPA

The Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan have their own air strips in the area and several countries are engaging in land reclamation and construction, although not at anything like China’s pace and scale.

Andrew Chubb, a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia who is researching China’s maritime disputes, said: “Ever since the 1980s, China has broken new ground almost year by year in terms of its level of activity in the disputed area. The principal difference with this latest land reclamation project is that regional countries, and the US, finally have some great visual imagery to use to draw attention to their concerns about China’s advances.

“The US and others are flagging up Chinese actions, as they have done many times over the past five years or more without creating this much of a stir, but I think the reason this is succeeding is that they now have the vivid optics to make people sit up and take notice.”

Senator John McCain, chairman of the US Senate armed services committee, called the Chinese moves aggressive and said they showed the need for the Obama administration to act on plans to move more military resources into the economically important Asian region and boost cooperation with Asian countries worried by China.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fiery Cross reef in the South China Sea is pictured in this handout satellite combination picture showing the reef on 14 August 2014 (left) and 18 March 2015. Photograph: CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative/DigitalGlobe/Reuters

“When any nation fills in 600 acres of land and builds runways and most likely is putting in other kinds of military capabilities in what is international waters, it is clearly a threat to where the world’s economy is going, has gone, and will remain for the foreseeable future,” he told a public briefing in Congress.

A spokesperson for the US State Department said the scale of China’s land reclamation and construction was fuelling concerns within the region that China intends to militarise its outposts and stressed the importance of freedom of navigation.

“The United States has a strong interest in preservation of peace and security in the South China Sea. We do not believe that large-scale land reclamation with the intent to militarise outposts on disputed land features is consistent with the region’s desire for peace and stability.”

The issue was discussed in a meeting in Washington between the US deputy secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and his Japanese and South Korean counterparts.

Japan’s deputy foreign minister, Akitaka Saiki, told reporters afterwards that China had a duty to address regional concerns, while his Korean counterpart, Cho Tae-yong, stressed the importance of stability in the South China Sea for trading states like his.

Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank said satellite photographs from 11 April showed the runway was about one-third complete,.

CSIS said the reclamation work could help China press its territorial claims, many of which are more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from its shores, by allowing it to sustain long-distance sea and air patrols. However, its artificial islands were too small and vulnerable, both to weather and wartime targeting, to support major forward deployment of military forces, it said.

Chubb noted that the UN convention on the law of the sea [UNCLOS] states explicitly that artificial islands do not generate territorial seas or exclusive economic zones within which maritime rights can be asserted.



In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the work at Fiery Cross reef was “lawful, justifiable and reasonable [and] does not target or impact on any other country”.

China’s ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, told a seminar in Washington that it was “natural” its reclamation work would include military defence facilities. He said there “should be no illusion that anyone could impose on China a unilateral status quo” or “repeatedly violate China’s sovereignty without consequences”.

In an apparent reference to US air activity, Cui added that UNCLOS , to which the US is not a signatory, did not give anyone the right to “conduct intensive and close-range reconnaissance in other countries’ exclusive economic zone”.