Even the Chinese have not clearly stated what the claim is, other than for individuals to state 'I think the Spratly Islands have always been part of China!'.
Looking at what we now as of this writing, what is on the (new) ground, the facilities seem to be capable of projecting military assets from at least the three 'airfield sites', and the smaller 'fort sites' are 80 metre slips and one fort with radar and some emplacements. Four small docking sites and 3 large potential airfields with port(s).
They are in a crude triangle. Subi at the North, Mischief on the SE and Fiery Cross on the SW. Extending 200nm/370km EEZ rings from those three points results in full coverage of the SCS to the Malay/Indo border, to *east* of Palawan Island, and down the coast of Vietnam to as far as Phan Thiet, and as close as the actual physical coastline in many cases.
Bringing the Paracels and Scarborough into a similar arrangement would cover all waters there from Bohai down to Indonesia.
The following observation is difficult to say without violating the TOS for the forum.
It seems clear that by the capabilities of what is already there and likely to be there, that these installations are designed to withstand any force sub-Japan or sub-USA.
IOW, to be superior to VN, PH, MY, ID and BN and anything those nations could mount in any naval sense either jointly or severally. Japan and the USA have tech that would render all of these facilities moot in an afternoon, however what happens next would be unwanted by everyone in the solar system.
The 40-m on a side, 6 to 8 storey buildings are modern star forts, with multiple high walls, and I still have not figured out what those 4-storey hexagonal structures are with the 3 metre centre holes and 4 metre thick walls. I hesitate to speculate. I know what *I* think they are, but that statement would violate the TOS.
There is *a lot* of very thick reinforced concrete already on these islands, many metres thick in many cases. That is extremely hardened for surface structures with no basements.
The buildings appear to be star forts with multiple defensible positions throughout the building, lips/gangplanks on the edge of each corner of each roof, 2-storey 'ground floor' windowless space under each building, and so on.
{BTW, Fiery Cross they appear to be building FOUR of those in a square next to each other - inspect the image from yesterday in extreme magnification}
I don't think I need to go into the details here, we all know the benefits of said construction.
Since, per my analysis, they *appear* to be designed to thwart a threat from those 5 nations, we can infer what the goals will be in the next 10 years. Clearly building out the three largest islands will take a year or two - they are just too substantial to outfit in a few months. It appears they are paving the entire surface of these new islands. 13 sq kms - that's going to take a while.
-Likely extension of the 'water cannon' diplomacy regarding all other regional fishing fleets
-PH fisherman already are selling boats as they claim they cannot fish as in the very recent past.
-Once secured, moving in thousands of Chinese fishing vessels.
-Then moving onto oil and gas exploration with deep sea rigs.
-In addition this projects out Chinese capability to beyond the 1st Island Chain, using only coastal defences on the new SCS island locations.
Just imagine as though Hainan were physically moved 1000kms to the SSE.
Basically the same result. The Chinese Coast Guard will be local and covering Chinese fishing fleets in the region, along with various PLAN hulls.
Once the area is secured, repeating this process on any of the other shoals, reefs or islands is physically possible with the supply chains that will be established by the end of this year.
Establishment of a new province is definitely a possibility, and later some of the larger reefs may be turned into tourist destinations with tourism infrastructure.
As for how geographically far this can go, I present a quote from this weeks news:
How they will do it? Again, TOS violation if I speculate.
The most polite way I can state it is: "Unilaterally".
