New reviews by China’s state-sanctioned media have revealed the extent of the inhabitants in Chinese language reclaimed and managed islands within the South China Sea.
CGTN, the worldwide arm of state tv community CCTV, reported on Monday {that a} Folks’s Liberation Military Navy (PLAN) hospital ship, Youhao, has simply accomplished an 18-day voyage masking 4,000 nautical miles (7,408 kilometers) and has now returned to port.
The hospital ship, commissioned in November 2020, visited 13 islands of the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos within the South China Sea, which China calls Xisha and Nansha islands, and “offered medical providers to greater than 5,000 individuals,” in line with CGTN.
They’re “officers and troopers stationed on Xisha and Nansha islands and reefs,” the TV channel mentioned.
That is the primary time a Chinese language official channel has disclosed the variety of troopers on the rocks and reefs that China has reclaimed and developed within the disputed South China Sea.
A report revealed earlier this 12 months by Recorded Future, a U.S.-based personal cybersecurity firm, estimated the variety of Chinese language troops stationed within the South China Sea was greater than 10,000.
A Pentagon report in 2016 mentioned China had reclaimed greater than 3,200 acres (13 sq. kilometers) of land within the South China Sea however the present space of synthetic islands is believed to be a lot bigger as reclamation works have continued lately.
Three of the reclaimed islands – Mischief Reef, Subi Reef and Fiery Cross – all within the Spratlys within the southern a part of South China Sea, have been totally militarized with warehouses, hangars, seaports, runways and radars, U.S. Indo-Pacific commander Adm. John Aquilino mentioned earlier this 12 months.
China’s efforts to rework synthetic islands into navy bases are “destabilizing to the area,” Aquilino mentioned.
Sansha‘s rising inhabitants
China and 5 different events together with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, maintain conflicting claims over elements of the South China Sea however Beijing’s claims are by far essentially the most expansive, nearly 90 per cent of the ocean.
Within the northern a part of the South China Sea, PLA troops seized a few of the reefs occupied by the South Vietnam military in 1974 and China is now the only real occupier of the Paracel archipelago with about 130 small coral islands and reefs.
Regardless of protests from neighboring international locations, in 2012 China established Sansha Metropolis to manage the Paracel and Spratly islands, Macclesfield Financial institution, Scarborough Shoal, and their surrounding waters.
Woody Island within the Paracels serves because the headquarters for Sansha Metropolis, which covers almost two million sq. kilometers, however consists of solely round 20 sq. kilometers of land.
Sansha had just one,800 everlasting residents together with civilians and navy personnel in 2020, making it the prefecture-level metropolis with the most important space however the smallest inhabitants in China, in line with one other CGTN report.
Youhao, or Friendship in English, is a 4,000-ton hospital ship in-built China. The ship has greater than 100 beds, three working theaters, and is provided with a variety of medical tools.
The ship’s medical employees got here from the First Naval Hospital of the Southern Theater Command in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province.
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