What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

China, Tawain, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have been recently piling huge amounts of sand onto reefs in the South China Sea, effectively making their own islands. However, China has been doing it to a large and rapid scale that it can be seen as dangerous and threatening. On these islands, China has built radar facilities (to allow a close watch of nearby happenings and allow the monitoring of air and ship traffic further from China's mainland); runways that can fit any type of fighter planes; shipping ports; and other military buildings. Within the last couple years China has built seven of these islands, in order to bolster their foothold in the Spratly islands.However, this rapid and upscale movement causes geopolitical tension between China and the United States. It has been stated in this article that China only wants to harness a portion of the South China Sea for personal use so they have the ability to fortify territorial claims, rather than to simply extract resources from the man-made land. This can be seen as economic to China because $1.2 trillion in Bilateral trade goes through the South China Sea every year. However, the United States government feels differently. Within the last several months, the White House has sent two Navy destroyers to patrol these islands for potential threats. It was also mentioned that this process causes extensive damage to the surrounding marine ecosystems. A professor of oceanography stated that sentiments "can wash back into the sea, forming plumes that can smother marine life and could be laced with heavy metals, oil and other chemicals from the ships and shore facilities being built".

Hailey Brzoska

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/what-china-has-been-building-in-the-south-china-sea-2016.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FSouth%20China%20Sea&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=collection&_r=0