China's illegal "big construction site" on Xu Bi Reef

Since early 2014, China has been using ships and modern mechanical equipment to illegally renovate and build on Xu Bi Reef in Vietnam's Truong Sa archipelago, after forcibly occupying it in early 1988.

Unforgettable memories

Colonel Hoang Ngoc Thai, Head of the Department of Party Affairs - Political Affairs - Naval Academy, still remembers clearly the time in early 1988. At that time, he was a captain, a lecturer at the Department of Sociology, and was mobilized by the Navy to participate in the CQ-88 campaign to occupy the submerged islands outside Truong Sa, along with hundreds of officers and students of the academy. “On the morning of February 18, 1988, from ship HQ-614, 9 officers and soldiers of the Naval Academy landed at Chau Vien, carrying the national flag, personal weapons, tools to plant the flag and probe the depth, preparing to build a house. After planting the flag, but the northeast monsoon blew strongly, the water was high, the ship's anchor drifted and the tide was up to the neck, so even though it was dark, the ship still had to start the engine and run around the beach, bringing the brothers out. At midnight, the military ordered that we must reach Chau Vien the next morning. However, 4 Chinese warships blocked the way, turned their cannons to threaten, making it impossible for us to enter and China dropped targets on the beach,” Colonel Thai recalled.

As the commander of the working group on the HQ-614 ship at that time, Colonel Nguyen Van Dan, former Deputy Chief of Staff of Naval Region 4 (now Naval Region 4 Command), clearly said: "Our policy is to occupy large reefs with important positions first, then deploy to smaller reefs. Xu Bi at that time could not be compared to Chau Vien, Chu Thap, Da Dong, Da Tay, Da Lon, so we only conducted reconnaissance, marking, and preparing for occupation later." But from around the end of January to the beginning of February 1988, China illegally occupied Xu Bi, followed by many other reefs. "When China illegally occupied them, we immediately thought that they would later mobilize modern means to dredge the lake in the reef to make a deep-water port, anchor cruisers, and create an overwhelming position with the countries also occupying the surrounding reefs," Colonel Dan said.

China's illegal "big construction site" on Xu Bi Reef

China's illegal "big construction site" on Xu Bi Reef

China's illegal "big construction site" on Xu Bi Reef

China's illegal "big construction site" on Xu Bi Reef

Cranes and gunboats

Fishermen in Phu Quy island district (Binh Thuan) who have been familiar with Truong Sa fishing grounds for many years said that among the reefs that China has illegally occupied from Vietnam and has been illegally building since the beginning of 2014, Xu Bi is one of three points (Xu Bi, Chu Thap, Chau Vien) where the inner lake bed is being dredged and a closed ship lock and anchorage are being built - logistics services for large ships.

Xu Bi Reef is located in the middle of the route of Vietnamese Navy ships moving from Song Tu Tay Island to Da Thi Island, about 35 nautical miles from Song Tu Tay and 40 nautical miles from Da Thi. In mid-May 2015, during the trip to Truong Sa, our ship approached Xu Bi Reef, saw that the surrounding area was surrounded by concrete slabs to prevent waves; the entrance to the lake was located on the east side, inside there were 4 large dredgers using specialized suction systems, pushing sand and rocks from the lake bed to the beach using pipes with a diameter of nearly 2 meters; next to 3 fixed - mobile crane systems on the island were small cranes, along with dozens of excavators serving a fleet of trucks running like shuttles. North of Xu Bi Reef, there were nearly 10 large transport ships, tugboats and even a giant cargo ship carrying 4 large cranes...

An officer on the ship said that at the south and north ends of Xu Bi shoal, China anchored two iron ships to protect the outer perimeter, and turned on bright lights at night to keep watch. When detecting a Vietnamese ship approaching, China sent the 996 landing transport ship with six 37mm cannons to push it away. On the afternoon of May 10, when a Vietnamese ship was about 7 km (3.7 nautical miles) from Xu Bi, the Chinese 996 ship immediately rushed out to threaten it.

With the massive progress, large construction scale and the arrangement of landing transport ships (capacity of 250 soldiers, 10 tanks, 4 LCVP landing craft) with dense artillery on deck, China clearly did not renovate these reefs to "better fulfill international obligations in search and rescue and other community services" as the country's authorities sophisticate.

According to Thanh Nien