At the 2016 South China Sea Research Forum, a user named "damein" published a post questioning the description of "KangtaiTan" on a well-known encyclopedia: "In 2002, Chinese scientists established the NS99-57 scientific research station here and stationed personnel."
The netizen believes that there is no way to station on Kangtai Beach, let alone conduct scientific expeditions.
This post caused a lot of controversy about Conte Beach, and people are curious, is there really a so-called scientific research station on Conte Beach? What is the real scene?
Kangtai Beach is located in the southwest of the South China Sea, its specific location in Huayang Island, Fiery Cross Island west of tens of kilometers or so, it is China's Nansha Islands southwestern edge of an island reef, but also the Nansha Islands to the South Mainland closest islands and reefs.
Kantai Beach is only about 350 kilometers away from Phan Long -Ta Cham city, and only about 300 kilometers away from the Vietnamese island of Phu Thi Dao.
Because it is located on the edge, the sovereignty of Kangtai Beach is directly related to the division of the surrounding hundreds of kilometers of coastline, and without this, a huge gap will appear in the nine-dash line of the South China Sea, so the importance and political significance of this place are self-evident.
The official naming date of Kangtai Beach was in 1983, named after Kang Tai, a famous emissary of the State of Wu during the Three Kingdoms period, kangtai was sent by Lü Dai, the minister of the State of Wu, to funanguo in the fifth year of Wu Huangwu.
This experience was one of the important moves of our country's early interaction with the Indochina Peninsula, and Kangtai experienced more than a hundred countries and tribes along the way, and even met with envoys from ancient India there.
Leaving a large number of precious historical materials, according to the experience of this trip, Kang Tai has successively written two books after returning to China, "Foreign Biography of Wu Shi" and "Chronicle of Foreign Objects in Funan", which recorded in detail what he saw and heard during this visit, and made great contributions to the historical research of the Indochina Peninsula.
In addition, Kangtai was also ordered to cruise south in the South China Sea by boat, although due to the extremely limited level of science and technology, this voyage was extremely difficult, but under the command of Kangtai, it still sailed to the vicinity of today's Kangtai Beach, but in order to commemorate his exploits, posterity chose to name it "Kangtai Beach".
Compared with the fleet led by Kangtai, many countries on the Indochina Peninsula at that time were in an extremely backward stage and were unable to carry out ocean voyages, which also provided effective proof for the legal theory of "since ancient times" in the South China Sea.
In modern times, the level of science and technology has gradually improved, and China has also conducted systematic research on Kangtai Beach in 2003.
In this study, China successfully salvaged chalk porous limestone that was strongly dissoluted from the seabed near Kangtai Beach at a depth of 1360m, and the benthic foraminifera fossils were also contained in these rocks.
From this discovery, we can infer the "origin" of Kantai Beach, a biological reef that began to grow from before the "Early-Middle" Miocene.
Perhaps because of this voyage, Kangtai also became the first person in history to record the "coral reef" in written form.
In general, coral reefs have a suitable water depth of zero to fifty meters, but this statement only applies to modern coral reefs, and for ancient coral reefs such as Conte Beach, it is likely to shift with the geographical changes in the seafloor.
According to the measurement data reported by the Journal of Tropical Oceanography, Kangtai Beach is a flat-topped mountain with a slope of about 15 °, and the average water depth is between 1650-307 meters, which also shows that Kangtai Beach is impossible to actively grow tall.
Judging from such conditions, the news that Chinese scientists established the "NS99-57 Scientific Research Station" and stationed personnel here in 2002 is not true.
Given the depth of the water at Contai Beach, the idea of establishing a scientific research station here is simply not possible.
In practice, the most ideal way to establish a scientific research station on an island and reef lurking below the sea surface is to build a sea surface stilt house, and there is no precedent for a stilt house with a depth of several hundred meters in the world.
Even short-term cantonment of berthing vessels is difficult, because according to common sense, the depth of the ocean-going anchor is only between one hundred and three hundred meters.
To be fixed to the bottom of the 307-meter Kangtai Beach, its practical operation is very difficult, and it often takes a lot of wasted time to be successful.
In addition, the deep-sea scientific expedition itself faces a huge cost, and for a "scientific research project" with almost no realistic value, it can be said that it is not worth the loss.
Moreover, even without considering the problem of cost and benefit, no country in the world today can erect a fixed scientific research platform in the air at a depth of several hundred meters for scientific personnel to station and investigate.
Therefore, there are obvious omissions in the encyclopedic statements. So where did this so-called "NS99-57 scientific research station" come from?
According to the analysis of "damein", it is likely that it comes from the 1999 "South China Sea Research and Development" data record, in this document once mentioned a point: in order to make up for the lack of seabed rock acquisition in China's marine research in the South China Sea, but also to lay the foundation for China's south China Sea marine development.
Therefore, in 1999, the "Experiment No. 3" scientific research vessel of the South China Sea Institute of Oceanography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences carried out activities in the reef area of Nansha Island, and at the same time, some places with better terrain were selected in the central and western parts of the Nansha Islands to collect rock samples.
Among them, Conte Beach is an excellent sampling site, and to complete this work, scientists have carried out a number of rock trawling activities near the waters of Conte Beach.
Three stations were also set up, namely NS99-17 (northeast edge of the Sunda shelf), NS99-52 (Fiery Cross Reef North), and NS99-57 (Conte Beach).
The news of the "NS99-57 Scientific Research Station" in Kangtai Beach is believed to have been misinformed here, which is actually an underwater rock dragging the site and has nothing to do with the establishment of the scientific research station.
From a practical point of view, Kantai Beach cannot be stationed, but this does not mean that it has no value.
Located on the border between China and Vietnam, under today's international environment, Kangtai Beach is also doomed to its strategically important value, and if we look at it from vietnam's point of view, it is easy to find the "key" in it, that is, the huge benefits contained in the seabed of the South China Sea.
Last year, Vietnam's economy reached $343 billion, and it is hard to imagine that the largest economic pillar of a "poor oil country" like Vietnam is the oil industry, and even accounted for about one-third of its gross domestic product at one point. Behind it is Vietnam's decades-long plunder of China's oil resources in the South China Sea.
As we all know, China's South China Sea oil resources are very rich, according to estimates that its total amount accounts for about 12% of the world's oil reserves, if all excavated can be used by China for more than 70 years.
But over the years, our southern neighbours have been stealing these resources.
Vietnam's earliest theft of Chinese oil can be traced back to the 1970s, and in 1974, South Vietnam brazenly invaded China's South China Sea and captured seven islands and reefs in the Nansha Islands in one fell swoop.
After the reunification of Vietnam in 1975 and decades of Chinese aid, the North Vietnamese government refused to return the seven islands without the slightest gratitude.
At that time, Sino-Soviet relations, and the Vietnamese side, under the leadership of Lê Duần, chose to side with the Soviet Union.
With the support of the Soviet Union, Vietnam has used these seven islands and reefs as a springboard to establish a number of oil fields near the South China Sea, such as the White Tiger Oil Field, the Qinglong Oil Field, and the Oriental Oil Field.
Deep-sea oil exploitation has certain requirements for the country's technical level After the collapse of the Soviet Union, due to Vietnam's own limited mining capacity, it has signed a "cheap selling" treaty with Britain, the Netherlands and Japan.
Allowing it to mine instead of itself can be described as "the cub sells the field without pain", under the vietnamese plunder of exhaustion and fishing, the resources of the South China Sea are rapidly lost at an alarming rate.
For what Vietnam has done, we see in our eyes, but suffering from international difficulties, has not been able to effectively restrain, with China's strong naval strength in recent years, in 2017, the People's Liberation Army has dispatched forty warships and several Y-8 military transport aircraft to warn the Vietnamese illegal mining team.
After this warning, Vietnam finally chose to give up and recovered it along with the offshore drilling platform that had just been deployed in the waters off the reef.
However, under the temptation of huge interests, the Vietnamese side still adopted the form of "guerrilla warfare" to harass and block China's oil exploration team in the South China Sea, which seriously damaged China's sovereignty.
The waters of the South China Sea are as high as more than three million square kilometers, and in such a vast sea area, the PLA cannot do it without leaks, as long as the Vietnamese side has that mind, with its geographical advantages, it can always "see the seam and insert the needle".
The importance of the location of Kangtai Beach was revealed at this time, among the 230 Nansha islands and reefs, Kangtai Beach is the closest to the Nansha island reef of the Vietnamese mainland, and it can also be said that if it is defended here, then it has the most extensive radiation range for the Vietnamese mainland, defending the Invasion of Vietnam for hundreds of kilometers.
In addition, Kangtai Beach is located in the western part of Fiery Cross Reef, if it can be used as a springboard for garrisoning troops, then it can effectively make up for the gap window on the western defense of Fiery Cross Reef, and Shunshi can also incorporate the idle sand sandwiched between the two into the defense range.
At the same time, the "Kangtai Beach - Yongxia Reef" and China's Huayang Reef are also echoing each other, and the three islands and reefs can perfectly form a triangular island chain relationship between them, forming a corner of each other, and any Vietnamese ships pass through here.
If the Vietnamese side is obstinate and still wants to encroach on the area north of the first line of China's Yin Qing Qun Reef until the Fiery Cross Reef area, then their whereabouts will be completely exposed under the eyes of the People's Liberation Army, and there is no way to hide, judging from the backward anti-submarine technology and anti-missile technology of the Vietnamese side, this is tantamount to seeking their own death.
This can greatly suppress Vietnam's ambitions and make it impossible for it to further covet our islands and reefs and oil reservoirs in the South China Sea.
When talking about the fact that Kangtai Beach is hidden hundreds of meters under the ocean and cannot be stationed, perhaps many people will ignore the importance of its location, the location of Kangtai Beach can be said to be very clever, although it is not a shipping artery, it is definitely the key point of the Confrontation between China and Vietnam.
Vietnam has occupied China's islands and reefs for decades, and the islands and reefs above China's Nansha Islands, such as Nanwei Island, West Reef, Middle Reef, East Reef and Riji Reef have all suffered from it.
However, if the problem of stationing at Kantai Beach can be solved, then it is possible to capture the vietnamese movements and respond in time by means of the geographical pre-emptive action.
At that time, the defense problems of Islands and reefs such as Namway Island and West Reef will be solved once and for all.
Although the news of the establishment of a scientific research station in Kangtai Beach in 2002 is indeed a misinformation, this does not mean that the problem of Stationing at Kangtai Beach cannot be solved.
The reason why Kangtai Beach cannot set up a station on the water is mainly because the location of the island reef is too deep, the seabed situation is complicated, and it is impossible to carry out construction.
Kangtai Beach is also not suitable for land reclamation work, because according to the construction standards of land reclamation, it can only be used for sea areas within 38 meters in theory, and Kangtai Beach does not meet this requirement.
But the problem appears to have been resolved in August this year.
On August 31 this year, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the China Salvage Bureau, Wang Lei, director of the Salvage Bureau, announced such news to the outside world at the meeting, and recently the Shanghai Salvage Bureau successfully completed China's first 500-meter saturated diving roadbed manned experiment.
Nine divers stayed at the pressure of fifty-one atmospheres at the bottom of the five-hundred-meter sea for more than 176 hours.
The proof of this experiment is that China can engage in longer continuous manual operations on the seabed under the limit depth. Including salvage, construction, maintenance and other work.
Under the condition of no equipment, human extreme diving is only more than ten meters, and there is almost no engineering value. Once the dive exceeds thirty meters, the nitrogen concentration in the human body will rise rapidly, triggering "nitrogen anesthesia" and bringing great danger to people in the deep sea.
Therefore, when diving, it is often necessary to use a high concentration of gas for the diver to breathe, but this also has a problem, that is, it takes too long and the operation is too cumbersome.
In the process of returning to the surface of the water, in order to give the body an "adaptation" process, the diver needs to continuously release pressure to ensure that the human body will not be harmed, which means that there will be a time cycle, often to "dive for ten minutes, rise for two hours".
This also makes deep-sea construction nearly impossible, but the success of the saturated diving land-based manned experiment means that divers can be provided with a "rest platform" underwater to replenish equipment and restore their strength.
The underwater working hours of divers have been greatly enhanced, making it possible to build a platform in the depths of 300 meters.
The success of this technology may mean that one day in the future, we can build a surface platform at Kangtai Beach and completely complete the protection of the South China Sea.