Daily Mail US
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China plans to revamp disused US airfield in the Pacific
China aims to bring back strategic airfield in the Pacific
dailymail.co.uk
7:00 AM · May 9, 2021

Any significant build-up on Kanton, located 1,864 miles southwest of Hawaii and U.S. military bases there, would offer a foothold to China deep into territory that had been firmly aligned with the U.S. and its allies since World War II.

It’s possible the airport could support fighter deployments if it is modernized and improved, as well as increased in usable size. //

But just how much domestic air travel would you expect to and from Canton?

There are around two dozen residents on Kanton who rely on subsistence fishing and supply ships.

Yep — it’s just screaming out for scheduled airline service at a shiny new civilian airport to be built by the Chinese. //

The island would in fact become “ a fixed aircraft carrier,” according to one military analyst.

But there are other benefits to China strengthening its ties with Kiribati. The nation consists of 32 atolls dispersed across an area of the Pacific Ocean totaling 1.4 million square miles. As such it has one of the largest “economic exclusion zones” (EEZ) involving a marine environment anywhere in the world. Kiribati limits commercial fishing inside its EEZ, but as I covered in this earlier article, China maintains, by far, the world’s largest fleet of commercial fishing vessels — possibly as many as 13,000 — which travel around the oceans of the world with a voracious appetite for taking seafood.