By WENDELL MINNICK
TAIPEI — China appears to be constructing an airstrip and sea port on Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea, according to regional media reports, in a move that looks like the next step in its efforts to claim the entirety of a water area roughly the size of India.
The expansion is part of numerous reef reclamation efforts being made by China, said Guy Stitt, president of AMI International Naval Analysts & Advisors. “China continues its slow fortification of the claims within its 9-Dash Line,” which outlines China’s purported “indisputable sovereignty” of the South China Sea.
China has active expansion programs on Gaven Reef and Cuarteron Reef, and the placement of a port and airstrip on Fiery Cross or any of the others would “be used to counter a US presence in the Philippines,” said Carl Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
The US military must now face the very real possibility that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will use these islands to implement a new air defense identification zone similar to the one created in the East China Sea last November.
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