South China Sea air strips’ main role is ‘to defend Hainan nuclear submarine base’
China’s underwater military strategy in the South China Sea, which remained concealed for the past two decades, suddenly emerged after an international tribunal rejected most of Beijing’s territorial claims in the hotly contested waters.
On July 12 – the same day the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague announced that China’s claims over the resource-rich and strategically vital South China Sea region had no legal basis – a photograph of China’s most advanced nuclear-powered submarine was “leaked” and published on many mainland military websites.
The photograph, revealing the expanded type 094A “Jin-class” submarine, led to speculation that the vessel might be capable of delivering China’s new generation, intercontinental-range ballistic missile, the JL-3, whose estimated range of 12,000km would enabling it to reach the United States from the South China Sea.
The first photo of China’s type 094A strategic nuclear submarine, an improved version of the type 094 submarine, which was posted online on July 12, the day South China Sea ruling was announced in the Hague. Photo: SCMP Pictures
“I believe the type 094A, which has been closely monitored by the US, was deliberately ‘leaked’ to warn the US,” Macau-based military observer Antony Wong Dong told the South China Morning Post.
On Monday Admiral Wu Shengli, of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, told visiting US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson in Beijing that China would not compromise its sovereignty and would press ahead with construction of facilities in the South China Sea.
Wu also warned that “the Chinese navy is fully prepared to cope with military provocation.”
As Beijing’s state media repeatedly attacked the ruling of the tribunal – which Beijing has refused to recognise – President Xi Jinping said that China’s “territorial sovereignty and marine rights” in the seas would not be affected.
The South China Sea is one of the world’s busiest trade routes, through which more than US$5 trillion of maritime trade passes each year between the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific Ocean.
However, Beijing has another – arguably more important – reason for prizing the 3.5 million square km area of waterway. It regards the waterway as crucial for providing its expanded submarine fleet, stationed the Yulin naval base in Hainan, with unrestricted access to the waters of Pacific Ocean.
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