The islands that China manufactures to extend its maritime domain

The boat moves up and down suddenly, also from side to side. The diesel engine noise shakes the deck and I hammered head. Dried fish and engine fumes fill the air. With his shirt stuck to his chest with sweat, sleep is impossible.

We carry over 40 hours surfing the South China Sea. Most of the time the speed of the human gait. “Who would want to be a fisherman?”I wonder aloud.

Suddenly I am struck by a kind of platform on the horizon. Looks earth, but on the GPS nothing.

He had seen aerial photographs of the area show huge job to reclaim land China, something that happens since last January.

There are trucks, cranes, steel tubes and scintillation of the welds. There are millions of tons of rock and earth dredged from the seabed and piled on reefs to form new land.

On a concrete slab soldier watching us with binoculars.

We are the first journalists to document the construction. I ask our captain who approaches but suddenly the light of a flare towers over us. It is a warning to the Chinese.

The emergence of new islands is a dramatic change in a long-running territorial dispute in the region between China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Only China and Taiwan claim all: not only the Spratly Islands but also the Scarborough (or Democracy) and the Paracel islands reefs. Philippines and Vietnam also claim large areas that include much of the Spratlys.

Earlier this year, the Chinese presence in the Spratly Islands was limited to a handful of concrete blocks on coral atolls. Now under construction on five islands reefs.

Indeed, one of them seems to be emerging an airbase with a large enough for use by combat aircraft track.

The strategy used to cope with a severe shortage of Chinese in the area. Of all the countries that claim parts of the South China Sea, is the only one who has control over a real island.

The Chinese have only reefs. The South Johnson took it in 1988 after a bloody battle that left 70 Vietnamese sailors dead. Since then, he has avoided any military confrontation.

For decades, it seemed a rather dormant issue, but the Communist Party in 2012 reclassified the area as “vital national interest”. That helped advance to actually have to assert their interests.

Beijing now seems to have decided that it is time to move forward with your claim by way of fact: a chain of islands and is virtually an unsinkable aircraft carrier.

The South China Sea is full of strange points with military bases and civilian settlements. It's difficult to decipher what is what and who controls what.

Vietnam has eight permanent positions, Malaysia also several outside the coast of Borneo and China, so far seven.

Philippines has nine, one is Pagasa. Land there is a relief after two days and two nights sailing from oxides.

Pagasa Island is a tiny crystal clear waters and white sands, it is far from the Philippines and Vietnam, and much of the rest of the world.

The state bought after forcing sell for a token sum to an eccentric businessman Tomas Cloma, who occupied it in 1956 and named “Freedomland” (“Land of Liberty”).

Manila's intention was to turn it into a military stronghold. But today, the concrete bunkers slip into the sea and air defenses are rusty. Only the airstrip serves.

Have 30 marines on the base. When I visit the Commander, at ten o'clock, duh. In the afternoon, still bleary-eyed, receives me.

“That's classified information”Responds when asked what has weapons to defend the enclave. I look around, do not speak more than a few rifles.

They could not do anything if one day the Chinese military decides to wipe them out.

But his most important assets are the 30 families living in the area. In Manila, there are 200 people, but only find a hundred. They have free food and house, plus there is a school for kids.

Mary Jo came to mount a fishing business, but was ruined. He accepted the job as manager of the island. Have big plans, just do not have enough money.

“The Chinese have so much money”He laments. “We have some, but it is important that we follow here. If not me, it seems that the Chinese would come”.

Because one thing is shooting at soldiers, as China did in 1988, and quite another to do it on women and children.

At 16 hours of Pagasa, just before dusk, we reached Ayungin. The waves lap against reefs and somehow we have to go through them without encayar.

Not far away, looming silhouette of the Sierra Madre, a ghost ship stuck on Philippine reefs. Since we are approaching the southern Chinese coast guard, but too late, the water is too low for them to pass on their big ships.

I had seen photos of the Sierra Madre, but the reality is even more shocking. From the cover, it looks even worse. It is rotten and must be very careful about where he puts one foot… and hands to climb a ladder accidentally rip a piece of wood.

I apologize. The scene is absurd and even comical, if it were not so tragic. The eleven marines, military air away from all the military seem ashamed of how they live.

“It is very hard for my men”Says the young lieutenant in charge. “We are far from home and sometimes there is little to eat, so that we get very difficult as”.

The Chinese ships again looming in the distance. They take over a year to block any attempt to bring aid and supplies to the Sierra Madre. If we had come from the southwest, we had been intercepted.

The Philippine Navy helps Marines with supplies parachute once a month. But the reality is that subsist on what they catch.

The Sierra Madre, according to my GPS, is 120 nautical miles from the coast of the Philippines, still in its claim to 200 miles “EEZ”.

Yet, Beijing claims that this submerged reef is an integral part of its territory.

China is at the beginning of its burgeoning naval power. The speed of change is enormous. Beijing builds warships and faster than any other country, including the US submarines. Whether it is on track to a second aircraft carrier.

Currently, the US Navy remains much larger and more powerful, but approaching faster than anyone expected.

And what happens in the South China Sea is an expression of Beijing's intentions: to dominate sea and air “first island chain”.

In the long term, China wants to go beyond the southern Philippines and Japan to “second island chain”: Palau, Guam and the Marianas.

That would be a cataclysmic shift in the balance of power in the Western Pacific.

In the past 70 years, Americans have not been challenged by anyone in the area.

Now, for the first time, a new power emerged and has not only the will but everything to challenge the military dominance of Washington. It is unlikely that the road not unleashed a storm.

SOURCE: Elcomercio.pe