China builds military airstrip on disputed island

The newly built facility stretches across Woody Island, part of the Paracel chain, China’s Xinhua news agency said late Tuesday.

The Paracels are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, and tensions between Beijing and Hanoi rose this year over Chinese construction and oil exploration there.

The runway is Beijing’s latest physical assertion of control in the area, two years after it declared a city named Sansha centered on Woody Island — known as Yongxing in Chinese — to administer vast swathes of the South China Sea.