According to the report, China will soon have military bastions on Kagitingan Reef, known internationally as Fiery Cross Reef, Calderon (Cuarteron), Burgos (Gaven), Mabini (Johnson South), Panganiban (Mischief), Zamora (Subi) and McKennan (Hughes).
The UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague had ruled that one of the reefs China is developing, Panganiban Reef, belongs to the Philippines.
Malaysia, too, has a claim on the Spratly islands, as do China, Taiwan, Brunei and Vietnam.
The report said it had obtained aerial photographs from a source which showed the reefs had been transformed into artificial islands “in the final stages of development as air and naval bases”. Most of the photos were taken between June and December 2017 and snapped from an altitude of 1,500 metres.
The report noted that installations such as runways, helipads, lighthouses, radomes, communication facilities, hangars, radars, observation towers and communication towers had been built on the reefs. The photos also showed the presence of Chinese military and cargo vessels in the disputed waters.
According to the report, the extent of development on the reefs shows that China has gone ahead with building military outposts in the Spratlys despite a 2002 agreement with Asean not to change any features in the sea.
At the same time, it noted, China had softened the impact of its military buildup with pledges of investments to the Philippines and talk of a framework for negotiating with Asean a code of conduct for the management of rival claims in the strategic waterway.
Inquirer.net quoted a December report by US think tank Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (Amti) that said Kagitingan Reef had the most construction in 2017, with work spanning 110,000 square metres.
The runways for the three biggest reefs – Kagitingan, Panganiban and Zamora – appeared either complete or almost ready for use. Lighthouses, radomes, communication facilities, hangars and multi-storey buildings had also been built on the artificial islands, added the Amti report.
Amti also said there were underground tunnels, missile shelters, radars and high-frequency antennas on the artificial islands.
Inquirer.net said three military ships capable of transporting troops and weapons were docked at Panganiban Reef in a picture taken last Dec 30, and that a Chinese missile frigate was spotted about a kilometre from Zamora Reef last Nov 15.
On the smaller reefs – Burgos, Calderon, McKennan and Mabini – the photos showed that helipads, wind turbines, observation towers, radomes and communication towers had been built. A photo taken last Nov 28 showed that a single-barrel 100mm gun had been positioned on McKennan Reef.
The report said China had ignored the Hague tribunal’s July 2016 ruling that invalidated Beijing’s sweeping claim to the South China Sea. However, President Rodrigo Duterte, who came to power two weeks before the ruling, refused to assert the Philippine victory, instead wooing China for loans and investments, Inquirer.net added.
It quoted several analysts who slammed the Philippine government for keeping silent, including security analyst Jose Antonio Custodio who questioned the Philippine government’s move to downplay China’s militarisation of the South China Sea in exchange for economic assistance.
It quoted Supreme Court senior associate justice Antonio Carpio, a member of the legal team that argued the Philippine case against China’s claim to almost the entire South China Sea in the Hague arbitral court, as saying if the Philippines did not assert its legal victory, it stood to lose 80% of its EEZ in the South China Sea, covering 381,000 square kilometres of maritime space.