By Shannon Tiezzi
China has announced it will complete its construction on the Spratlys “in the upcoming days.”
China’s island-building in the South China Sea is drawing to a close, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang announced on Tuesday. “[A]s planned, the land reclamation project of China’s construction on some stationed islands and reefs of the Nansha [Spratly] Islands will be completed in the upcoming days,” he said in a statement.
The remark comes after a renewed United States push to get all claimants in the South China Sea to stop building projects. As U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter put it in his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, “there should be an immediate and lasting halt to land reclamation by all claimants.”
At the time, there was little acceptance from any of the claimants, including China. “China’s construction work on some garrisoned islands and reefs of the Nansha [Spratly] Islands is totally within China’s sovereignty,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a statement responding to Carter’s speech. “It is lawful, reasonable and justified, not affecting or targeting any other countries.”
So why is China announcing an end to the reclamation now?
Read the full story at The Diplomat