China builds spy base on disputed island: think tank

China is developing one of the contested Paracel Islands into a major intelligence base in the northern part of the South China Sea, new satellite images analyzed by a British think tank revealed. A new report by Chatham House found that Beijing has been building a massive new radar system on Triton – the westernmost and southernmost island in the Paracel archipelago, less than 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Vietnam’s coast.

Vietnam and Taiwan also claim sovereignty over the Paracels but China controls the entire island chain after seizing it from the South Vietnam government in 1974. Beijing’s deployment of a drilling platform near Triton island in May 2014 led to a serious standoff with Hanoi and triggered an unprecedented wave of anti-China protests in Vietnam.

Triton Island, called Zhongjian Dao in Chinese, also serves as a base point that China uses to draw a straight baseline to claim its territorial waters around the Paracel Islands. A U.N. arbitration tribunal in 2016 rejected this claim and the United States challenges it with its freedom-of-navigation operations in the area.

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