Posted on August 12, 2024
Vietnam has dramatically accelerated its effort to expand islands and reclaim land in the contested South China Sea since the start of the year to challenge rising Chinese assertiveness, according to satellite imagery and interviews with Vietnamese officials, security analysts and diplomats.
While Vietnam has been enlarging its presence across a remote collection of rocks, reefs and islets called the Spratlys since 2021, the country is on pace this year to create more than 1,000 acres of new land there, more than in any year prior.
Not since China carried out its own island-building campaign there a decade ago, turning semi-submerged reefs into sophisticated military bases, has the landscape of the archipelago been so transformed. In just three years, Vietnam has increased its amount of land in the Spratlys tenfold.
Leaders of Vietnam’s communist government have traditionally been muted about its land reclamation drive in the South China Sea, often refusing to explain or acknowledge the effort even in private conversations, said security analysts and diplomats.
But in rare interviews in the capital, Hanoi, five former and current Vietnamese officials said the government has been “consolidating” outposts for the purpose of self-defense, part of a broader strategy to counter security threats “early and from afar.”
“We will resort to every means possible to make sure we can defend and safeguard our legitimate interests in the East Sea,” said Le Dinh Tinh, director general of policy planning in Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, using Vietnam’s name for the South China Sea. Vietnam’s activities in the Spratlys are “completely within its legitimate rights,” he added.
Tinh stressed that Vietnam wants a peaceful resolution to its maritime disputes but added that the government is alarmed by the recent escalation of tensions in the South China Sea, particularly between China and the Philippines, which have violently clashed over a shoal within the Spratlys.
Island outposts in the Spratlys
The largest natural feature in the Spratly Island chain is Itu Aba, which is occupied by Taiwan, but its size was dwarfed by China’s island reclamation projects beginning in 2014 and now by Vietnam’s efforts in island building.
China has long sought to dominate the South China Sea, a strategic, resource-rich waterway that six other governments say belongs in part to them. Under leader Xi Jinping, Beijing has increasingly antagonized and confronted other claimants. Chinese ships have repeatedly harassed Philippine vessels in the disputed waters in recent months, raising the prospect that the United States, which has a mutual defense treaty with Manila, could be drawn into armed conflict.
From 2013 to 2015, China undertook an island-building blitz in the Spratlys, reclaiming about 3,000 acres of land, where it then constructed military bases complete with anti-ship and antiaircraft missile systems, radar domes, and fighter jets.
In response, Vietnamese officials say, Vietnam built out the small outposts it had been occupying in the Spratlys, dredging and filling in land, fortifying barriers, and erecting new structures.
The most dramatic transformation in recent months has occurred at Barque Canada Reef, a narrow, 18-mile atoll on the southern end of the Spratlys that Vietnam has doubled in size to 492 acres since November. The reef, which once hosted six pillbox-like structures, is now Vietnam’s largest outpost in the Spratlys, wide and long enough to potentially accommodate a 3,000-meter airstrip for large military and transport aircraft, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) at the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
At Barque Canada, as elsewhere, Vietnam has been using powerful cutter suction dredgers to create channels and harbors for boats, and has begun construction on “coastal defense structures,” such as walled fortifications that could store artillery, said Harrison Prétat, AMTI’s deputy director. A half-dozen videos shared by Vietnam’s official government channels and reviewed by The Washington Post show cranes and excavators at the Spratly outposts working to install concrete and metal pillars for docks and piers.
By developing these outposts, Vietnam can deploy more ships and personnel to the Spratlys, strengthening its footprint in the disputed waters, said Ha Hoang Hop, a Hanoi-based military analyst. The outposts can also host radar and radio systems that reveal the movements of Chinese vessels, which often turn off location trackers or “go dark” in the South China Sea, said Hop.
‘Don’t push us too hard’
In addition to its land reclamation, Vietnam has expanded its maritime militia — government-funded ships used to chase off foreign vessels — and upgraded commercial fishing ships that operate far offshore, mirroring China’s tactics to strengthen its presence at sea, say security analysts.
“What Hanoi is signaling to China is this: ‘Don’t push us too hard,’” said Huong Le Thu, an Asia-focused analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Hanoi has also enhanced security cooperation with the United States, Japan and Australia, which all upgraded ties with Vietnam over the past 10 months, primarily in response to Chinese assertiveness, according to Le Thu and other analysts studying Vietnam.
The United States recently transferred two Coast Guard cutters and began delivering 12 training aircraft to Vietnam as part of more than $330 million worth of security assistance and arms sales, according to State Department reports. In July, a U.S. Navy vessel paid a rare port call to Cam Ranh Bay, a strategic Vietnamese base facing the South China Sea.
Asked about Vietnam’s island building, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi declined to comment on it directly, saying more generally that they are “concerned about a change in the status quo” in the Spratlys. At the same time, officials said, the United States supports Vietnam’s defense of its sovereignty.
Vietnam shares an 800-mile land border with China, which is also its largest trading partner. Hanoi is reluctant to antagonize Beijing, but ties between the two countries have long been strained by historical enmities and, increasingly, by China’s projection of power at sea.
In the years since an international tribunal ruled in 2016 that China’s claims over the South China Sea have no legal basis, China’s presence there has only intensified, including in areas claimed by Vietnam, according to ship-tracking data. China has also deepened its security relationship with Vietnam’s neighbor Cambodia, concerning officials in Hanoi who fear being encircled by old enemies.
At the same time, China has stepped up efforts to court Vietnam. In December, President Xi visited Hanoi, signing dozens of bilateral agreements. “China and Vietnam have common ideals and convictions and enjoy a shared future,” China’s Foreign Ministry said during the visit.
The Foreign Ministry did not respond to questions for this report.
A history of tensions
The steps that Vietnam takes to “secure itself” in the South China Sea, including its island building, should not be regarded as escalatory, said Nguyen Hong Quan, a Vietnamese major general and retired official at the Ministry of Defense. “After all,” he said, “it’s China that started this.”
In 2014, China sent an oil rig 120 miles from Vietnam’s mainland, according to Vietnamese officials, deep inside what the country considers its 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). This prompted a months-long standoff that saw Chinese boats spraying Vietnamese boats with water cannons and sinking at least one Vietnamese vessel. Anti-Chinese protests across Vietnam devolved into riots, with businesses owned by Chinese people looted and burned.
More recently, there have been regular skirmishes and standoffs at sea between the two countries, Vietnamese officials said. But Vietnam and China have refrained from publicizing most of these. Chinese vessels have also continued to enter Vietnam’s EEZ, according to ship location data tracked by research groups like AMTI and the South China Sea Chronicle Initiative, a Vietnam-based think tank.
Since 2019, China has increased patrols in areas where Vietnam has oil and gas interests and deployed what China says are research vessels in Vietnam’s waters with growing frequency, sometimes for weeks at a time. Last year, after privately pressing China to withdraw a research vessel to no avail, Vietnam publicly rebuked its neighbor. In June, Vietnam again called out the “illegal activities” of a Chinese survey vessel in its EEZ.
China has not dispatched ships to challenge Vietnam’s island-building efforts. But security analysts said that could change if tensions in the Spratly Islands continue to mount. “We can’t rule out the possibility of conflict … whether by accident or by design,” said Tinh, the Vietnamese official in the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
In particular, if China moves to cement its control over the Second Thomas Shoal, now the focus of a hot dispute with the Philippines, Vietnam could face domestic pressure to become even more aggressive in defending its own outposts in the Spratlys, said Quan, the retired defense official. “We’ll be forced to act,” he added.
