Commercial satellite imagery has revealed new construction on Yagong Island, a small coral outcrop in the Crescent Group of the disputed Paracel Islands, offering another indication of China’s expanding military infrastructure in the South China Sea. Satellite imagery reviewed by Reuters shows a distinctive three-pronged structure under construction on the island.
Commercial imagery provider Vantor captured the latest image on Aug. 17 and said construction began in March and April. While the installation’s purpose has not been confirmed, Vantor said several structures resemble military radar and early-warning facilities China has constructed elsewhere in the South China Sea.
Security analysts say the facility could eventually support operations at Antelope Reef, roughly 14 kilometers away, where Beijing has completed the first phase of a much larger construction project.
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The developments come as China continues expanding the surveillance, communications, and targeting infrastructure that could support its increasingly sophisticated missile forces during a regional conflict.
Growing military presence
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China has spent years expanding its missile arsenal. Pentagon estimates put its inventory at at least 3,150 ballistic missiles and 300 ground-launched cruise missiles as of 2024. But long-range weapons depend on more than missiles themselves.
Attacking moving targets at extended distances requires what military planners describe as a “kill chain”: systems capable of detecting a target, identifying it, tracking its movements, transmitting targeting information, and updating that information as conditions change. Radar and other surveillance installations throughout the South China Sea could contribute to that broader network, analysts note.
Singapore-based security scholar Collin Koh told Reuters that the installation could be a standalone observation post, but said his “educated guess” was that it was most likely a radar station. The site’s location is particularly notable because of the much larger development underway at nearby Antelope Reef. Satellite imagery shows an artificial island nearly six kilometers long there, including a straight stretch of coastline that analysts have identified as potentially suitable for a runway.
Beijing has not publicly acknowledged constructing a military base at Antelope Reef. Chinese state media have instead described development there in civilian terms, including weather forecasting, fisheries protection, and scientific research.
Vietnam protests construction
The new construction has also drawn a response from Vietnam, which claims sovereignty over the Paracel Islands. On Aug. 28, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang demanded that China halt activities in the archipelago, saying Beijing’s actions violated Vietnam’s sovereignty and international law.
China has controlled the Paracels since 1974, when Chinese forces seized them from South Vietnam following a naval battle. Vietnam continues to claim the islands. The South China Sea remains one of Asia’s most contested waterways, with China asserting extensive claims that overlap with those of several neighboring governments.
The region is also strategically-important to Washington and its allies and could become critical in the event of a conflict involving Taiwan. Though Taiwan operates as an independent nation since its establishment in 1949, Beijing, under its “One-China” policy views the island as a “breakaway province,” and has vowed to reclaim it by any means necessary, even if that means resorting to military force to achieve unification.
Military expansion continues
The latest construction comes amid continued growth in Chinese military spending. China’s central-government defense expenditure for 2026 stands at approximately 1.91 trillion yuan, or about $276 billion, representing a 7 percent increase over the previous year’s executed budget. China’s broader national defense allocation is approximately 1.94 trillion yuan.
It marks the 11th consecutive year in which Beijing’s officially announced defense-budget growth has remained in the single digits. Outside analysts have long argued that China’s published defense budget does not capture the full extent of military-related spending, making the precise cost of the country’s military modernization difficult to determine.
The expansion has continued even as China’s civilian economy faces mounting pressure, particularly among younger workers. Urban unemployment among people aged 16 to 24, excluding students, climbed to 17.9 percent in July, up sharply from 14.9 percent in June. An estimated 12.7 million university graduates entered China’s labor market this summer, approximately 4 percent more than last year.
The figures underscore the contrasting pressures facing Beijing as it attempts to sustain military modernization while confronting a difficult domestic employment environment.
What the imagery does, and doesn’t, show
The exact purpose of the Yagong Island structures remains unconfirmed. Open-source analysts have cautioned that radar is only one possible explanation based on the satellite imagery currently available.
Fixed installations on small islands would also have vulnerabilities during a conflict. Their locations are known, and maintaining communications and targeting networks during wartime would be considerably more difficult than operating them during peacetime. Still, the construction fits a broader pattern of incremental infrastructure development across China’s South China Sea outposts.
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