China has nearly completed the construction of an airstrip on one of its artificial islands in the hotly disputed South China Sea, according to new satellite photos released by Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), part of the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
The island is one of a number of artificial land masses created in the sea’s Spratly archipelago by dredging up rock and sand from the seafloor and building the material onto already existing reefs, the BBC reports. The Spratly archipelago contains more than 100 small islands or reefs, and its ownership, wholly claimed by China, …read more
Source: Newsweek
