China appears set on militarizing another reef in the South China Sea
The geospatial firm ingeniSPACE first noticed the phenomenon, as 2,000 Chinese vessels created this formation from Dec. 25-27 in waters northeast of Taiwan.
This coordinated activity occurred just three days before China announced a major exercise circumscribing Taiwan. Dubbed Justice Mission-2025, the PLA exercise was designed to browbeat Taiwan and rehearse the implementation of a naval blockade.
Something similar took place from Jan. 9-12, when some 1,400 Chinese fishing boats formed a 200-mile-long “barrier” for more than 30 hours, according to automatic identification system data.
China has debuted its new landing barges
Just to their right, a line of strange looking ships loom in the mist. The enormous ships are unmoving, raised above the waves by thick pylons. Drop-down bridges connect them to each other, the front one extending down to the sand. Jason Wang, chief executive of Ingenispace, a geospatial analysis company, said the ships were a clear sign of China’s “creativity…They can produce the ships really fast – four to six months – and get them into theatre,” Wang said. “They can also iterate improvements faster than everybody else.”