Friday, March 10, 2017

Photos of the day: AG 600 amphibious aircraft awaits its maiden flight

After completing its engine ground trials.  This bird can carry up to 50 tourists to vacation spots in the South China Sea. 








Hainan wants to add flights to bring more tourists to disputed South China Sea islands
by Alex Linder in News    on Mar 7, 2017 9:20 pm

http://shanghaiist.com/2017/03/07/south_china_sea_flights.php

Looking to get away from it all? Why not plan a trip to one of the most heavily contested places on earth?

After building artificial islands in the middle of the South China Sea and filling them with airstrips, cute female soldiers, veggie gardens and surface-to-air missiles, China is now working hard on turning the disputed islands into tourist hotspots.

According to the South China Morning Post, Hainan delegates at this year's National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing have released a document stating that tour flights to the Paracels (Xisha Islands) are one of their priorities for this year.



Saturday, January 03, 2015

Photos of the day: Yong Xing Island, South China Sea, Vacation spot.

Wifi included.























Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Photos of the Yong Xing Island

YongXiang island 永兴岛 (woody island) is the main island of the Xisha islands (Paracel islands) in the South China Sea. It is approximately 2.1 square kilometers in size.

It is home to the PLAN Marine Xisha Island Garrison (battalion size) and a civilian emergency rescue center. It has an artificial harbor that can accommodate ships up to 5000 tone and a modern 2350 meters runway that can support a Boeing 737 class transport.

It has no fresh water source, so a water slide park is out of the question.

















2 comments:

ABT said...

In the first article you are confusing the Paracels (Xisha Islands) with the Spratlys (Nansha Islands) they are two distinct things.


"After building artificial islands in the middle of the South China Sea and filling them with airstrips, cute female soldiers, veggie gardens and surface-to-air missiles, [that's the Spratlys] China is now working hard on turning the disputed islands into tourist hot spots [that's the Paracels]."

The second and third articles are about Yong Xing Island, that's Woody Island which is one of the Paracels, it's not really in the "middle of the South China Sea" closer to Vietnam & China than any other country, it's not an artificial island (yes it was enlarged, but not created), it had an airstrip and Chinese military presence for a long time (i.e. since the 70's).

Since 2015 the news has been full of articles about the Spratlys (the ones that are really in the middle of the SCS): land reclamation, military outposts, arbitration with the Philippines, dispute with Vietnam, Freedom of Navigation by the US navy, etc. All those are about he Spratlys not the Paracels, but anyone coming across your blog post would think the tours are for the former not the latter.

Maybe for the average reader all South China Sea islands look the same, but I prefer my information to be exact so I researched the subject (Google Earth + Wikipedia) because most news articles do a poor job of explaining the situation.

Great pictures of the AG-600, keep up the good work!

Coatepeque said...

Thank you for the details but the purpose of the blog post is to point out that they are all "vacations spots" to the Chinese public now. With AG-500 near service, the public has the civilian means to get there. Airstrips or not.