The Chinese military has begun to deploy more defensive fortifications in the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands, including technology capable of interfering with radar and communications systems, according to a new report.

In addition to developing long-term defense infrastructure in the region, which trillions of dollars of goods transit annually, last week Chinese military forces started large-scale exercises in the South China Sea.

“There’s some speculation as to the motive of the drills in the South China Sea, some attribute them to the trade war,” Collin Koh, a research fellow in maritime security at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, told Sputnik News on April 9.

“I think one of the very interesting observations is that the scale of the more recent navy drills that we’ve seen, with around 40-something vessels, these boats don’t just come from the East Sea, which is basically responsible [for the] South China Sea. What we are seeing here is basically a combination of fleets from the north and the south — in terms of the scale it’s pretty unusual, I would say,” the maritime security specialist observed.

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