Cleo Paskal, a non-resident senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defence of Democracies, posted a video on social media last week showing an airport runway being rebuilt on Woleai, a remote 4.5 sq km atoll in Micronesia’s Yap state.
“Chinese company at work rebuilding the old Imperial Japanese runway on Woleai, Yap, Federated States of Micronesia – a bit over 600 miles from Guam. Scheduled to be completed by the end of the month,” Paskal said in the post on December 10.
Originally built in the early 1940s by imperial Japan, the runway was wrecked by US bombers during the second world war, leaving it unusable, according to the Habele Institute, a project run by the US-based non-profit Habele Outer Island Education Fund.
Now at least two Chinese companies appear to be involved in rebuilding the facility.
At the time of the groundbreaking ceremony in May, Shandong Hengyue Municipal Engineering Co Ltd, a private Chinese firm, said in a company statement that it was working on the project.
