By: Melissa Zhao

Vietnam is racing China in the building of islands in the disputed area of the South China sea. The country hopes to extend its territories. And it definitely has. Vietnam has been improving its control of the water in comparison to China since November 2023. This race will have incredible rewards for whichever country succeeds and horrible consequences for the ones who fail.

In recent years, Vietnam has rapidly been accelerating its speed of construction. Between November 2023 and June 2024, Vietnam built 1 square mile of land across 10 features it controls in the archipelago. Compared to 1.2 square miles of land from the beginning of 2022 to November 2023, Vietnam is evidently pushing all its workers as hard as it possibly can in the rush to match China in its size and power.

The new islands and extension of the boundaries will give Vietnam several more large and important ports in the Spratly Islands. Vietnam also needs to build strongholds to help search and rescue fishermen in rough conditions like dangerous, angry, storms or large, crashing, waves, as well as the need to prevent fishermen from accidentally stealing fish from waters they have no right to take from.

Vietnam has been launching important but swift missions to work on building and constructing more islands as fast as they can to claim more land for themself and also to help improve their country. To create the island, they have been dredging up seabed and strategically piling the material over reefs to forge new land. Vietnam hopes this new land will help them to operate more coast guards or vessels in disputed areas for long periods of time, without having to make the long return journey back to the Vietnam coast.

Image Credit by jason hu