China appears set on militarizing another reef in the South China Sea

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Satellite tv for pc imagery seems to indicate China is about to reclaim land on one other reef within the South China Sea for yet one more army base.

Concurrently, China demonstrated using tons of of fishing boats to assist future fight operations in opposition to Taiwan.

The coral reef in query is Antelope Reef, positioned at 16°27’45”N, 111°35’20”E within the Paracel Islands. It’s 250 miles east of Hue in Vietnam, and about 175 miles southeast of Sanya Naval Base on China’s Hainan Island.

Based on the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative – AMTI for brief – China has army outposts, together with subtle army bases corresponding to Woody Island, on 20 islands within the Paracels. Beijing seized the Paracel chain from Vietnam in 1974.

Dredging of the jap and southern edges of the lagoon began after mid-October 2025, and satellite tv for pc photos taken in January 2026 confirmed substantial modifications corresponding to new infrastructure and an entry method for roll-on/roll-off berths, Newsweek reported this month. Such works enable the arrival of heavy gear for dredging and land reclamation.

AMTI describes Antelope Island as “little greater than a sandbar,” and beforehand it had simply a few buildings on it. If China turns it right into a army base, it might act as a helipad, radar station and anchorage for Chinese language warships and coast guard vessels.

China additionally has seven army outposts within the Spratly Island chain due south of the Paracels, in line with analysts. China has created 3,200 acres of recent land there. Moreover, China controls Scarborough Shoal, which it seized from the Philippines in 2012.

In the meantime, Vietnam can be strengthening its infrastructure within the Spratly Islands.

In addition to nursing a rising community of lily-pad installations, China rehearsed a brand new tactic late final 12 months by mobilizing tons of of fishing boats to create two huge L-shaped “floating boundaries” 290 miles lengthy.

The geospatial agency ingeniSPACE first seen the phenomenon, as 2,000 Chinese language vessels created this formation from Dec. 25-27 in waters northeast of Taiwan.

This coordinated exercise occurred simply three days earlier than China introduced a serious train circumscribing Taiwan. Dubbed Justice Mission-2025, the PLA train was designed to browbeat Taiwan and rehearse the implementation of a naval blockade.

One thing related befell from Jan. 9-12, when some 1,400 Chinese language fishing boats shaped a 200-mile-long “barrier” for greater than 30 hours, in line with automated identification system information.

Such floating “partitions” of fishing boats show a brand new degree of coordination that gives Beijing extra methods to impose management in contested seas. These maneuvers are complicated and big, as these vessels halted regular actions and assembled right into a dense formation.

These occasions illustrate how the Chinese language army controls fishing fleets by way of the Individuals’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM).

A U.S. Congressional Analysis Service report printed in Could 2025 acknowledged that the PAFMM’s position is to defend Chinese language maritime claims.

It mentioned, “Within the view of some observers, the PAFMM – much more than China’s navy or coast guard – is the main part of China’s maritime forces for asserting its maritime claims, notably within the South China Sea.”

The report’s authors remarked that in peacetime the PAFMM advances Beijing’s maritime territorial claims, and that in conflict it could “assist fight operations by conducting reconnaissance or creating obstacles and offering logistical assist to different PLA forces.”

Throughout a Taiwan contingency, for instance, such floating boundaries might overwhelm transport lanes, block ports, disrupt naval and legit business site visitors, act as decoys and overwhelm an adversary with too many targets.