China eyes airstrip near Pag-asa Island

MANILA, Philippines - China is reportedly planning to build its first airstrip adjacent to the Pag-asa Island, a Philippine-held territory in the hotly contested Spratlys Island.

The construction of the airstrip at the Subi Reef has yet to start but Beijing is reportedly eyeing the back of a four-story building as location for the new airstrip.

The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei have interlocking territorial claims over the region while China, Vietnam and Taiwan are claiming the entire hotly-contested region as an integral part of their respective maritime domain.

Aside from a two four-story buildings, two troop quarters, China has also installed a big radar dome and a lighthouse within the six kilometers long and 3.7 kilometers wide reef.

At the northern tip of the reef is a lighthouse that can be seen from Pag-asa during good weather.

The Philippine’s aerial territorial patrol also spotted a Chinese landing ship armed with three heavy weapons moored in Subi Reef.

“As we have gathered, China is planning to replicate in Subi Reef what the Malaysians have done in their occupied Layang-Layang Reef,” Kalayaan Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon said.

Layang-Layang is currently being marketed by the Malaysian government as one of its finest dive resorts in the region. From a reef, Malaysian developed the area into an island resort with an airport, a hotel and a naval detachment.

Subi Reef is only 12 nautical miles from the Philippine-occupied Pag-asa Island, seat of the Kalayaan Island municipality in the Spratly region, which are within the 64,976 square miles territorial jurisdiction of Kalayaan Island municipality under the province of Palawan.

China deploys military garrison

Beijing will establish a military garrison on a group of disputed islands in the South China Sea, its defense ministry said yesterday.

The move will likely spark further tensions with its neighbors.

The troops will operate from Sansha in the Paracel Islands, one of two archipelagos in the West Philippine Sea that are claimed by both China and Vietnam. – With Pia Lee-Brago