{"id":353,"date":"2014-09-09T01:43:47","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T01:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/?p=353"},"modified":"2014-09-09T01:44:39","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T01:44:39","slug":"chinas-construction-boom-in-the-spratlys-bbc-world-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/?p=353","title":{"rendered":"China&#8217;s construction boom in the Spratlys"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ScreenGrab.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-355\" alt=\"ScreenGrab\" src=\"http:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ScreenGrab-300x168.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ScreenGrab-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ScreenGrab-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ScreenGrab.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>What&#8217;s changed as a result of China&#8217;s massive construction projects in the Spratly islands? Legally &#8211; nothing &#8211; but strategically &#8211; we wait and see. All the features that the PRC occupies in the Spratlys would be naturally underwater at high tide, so building on them, doesn&#8217;t mean they will count as &#8216;territory&#8217; under international law. However, if the massive dredging and land formation work ends up creating an airbase in the southern South China Sea, the military position will shift in China&#8217;s favour. An interview for BBC World News <a title=\"Link to the interview on YouTube\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=twR4ue_3v3E&amp;feature=youtu.be\" target=\"_blank\">here&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s changed as a result of China&#8217;s massive construction projects in the Spratly islands? Legally &#8211; nothing &#8211; but strategically &#8211; we wait and see. All the features that the PRC occupies in the Spratlys would be naturally underwater at high tide, so building on them, doesn&#8217;t mean they will count as &#8216;territory&#8217; under international [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[25,24,23,31],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ScreenGrab.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4tOHn-5H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billhayton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}