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Officials yesterday shared photos of the structure, which […] resembled “a square platform with several people on board and an antenna positioned at its center.” The structure “appeared to have been built from wooden planks forming a central deck, surrounded by cylindrical flotation devices secured around its perimeter,” the news agency added.
Scarborough Shoal, a triangular reef surrounded by rich fishing grounds about 200 kilometers off the coast of the Philippines’ Luzon island, has been a persistent flashpoint in the maritime dispute between Manila and Beijing. The shoal has been under Chinese control since 2012, when the two nations engaged in a tense 10-week stand-off that concluded with China occupying the feature, despite an agreement for mutual withdrawal from the shoal.
Since then, China Coast Guard vessels have surrounded the shoal and made repeated attempts to restrict access to the shoal for Filipino fishermen from nearby Luzon. Last year, it also announced the creation of a national nature reserve at the shoal, which Philippine officials said could lead to the “eventual occupation” of the shoal.
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Indeed, the news about the new platform has prompted comparisons to the situation at Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands. China first occupied the reef in 1994, and quickly built a series of small structures on stilts, supposedly as shelters for fishermen. Despite protests from the Philippines, it continued to augment these structures over the course of the next decade before beginning large-scale land reclamation in 2014.
Today, Mischief Reef is one of the seven artificial islands that China has built in the South China Sea, equipped with a runway, radar systems, anti-aircraft weapons, and surface-to-air missiles.
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