GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS:

The South China Sea remains a geopolitical hotspot with, just this week, Vietnam claiming Chinese ships seized a Vietnamese fishing boat and its cargo near the Paracel Islands and the U.S. sending three aircraft carriers to the region. This article looks at the sand dredging operations that undergird China's massive island-building project to bolster its territorial claims in the South China Sea, among other things. "In recent years, China has assembled an armada of oceangoing dredges. Some it buys from Japan, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Increasingly, though, China manufactures them itself. China’s homemade dredges are not yet the world’s largest, nor are they any more technologically advanced than those of other countries, but it is building many more of them than any other country. In the past decade, Chinese firms have built some 200 vessels of ever greater size and sophistication. ... In 2015 alone, China created the equivalent of nearly two Manhattans of new real estate. In recent years, it constructed two artificial islands to support a 34-mile-long bridge that connects Hong Kong with Macao and the Chinese mainland; it opened in October 2018 and is the world’s longest sea crossing. Much of that work was carried out by state-owned CCCC Dredging, the world’s largest dredging firm. By way of comparison: In 2017, Great Lakes Dredge and Dock, America’s biggest, took in an estimated $600 million from dredging operations. CCCC Dredging booked $7 billion. ... CCCC Dredging has begun taking on projects overseas, and it now operates in dozens of countries. It has a particular focus on places targeted for Chinese-led port development as part of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative. ... It may be too late for other nations to do much about China’s artificial-land grab. Admiral Philip S. Davidson, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress in April [2018] that 'China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.' ... Today, geopolitical power goes not only to those who control territory but to those who can manufacture it." www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/19/103629/aboard-the-giant-sand-sucking-ships-that-china-uses-to-reshape-the-world/