Manila, Philippines – On February 2, 1995, just over two years after the last American soldiers had left the Philippines, a Filipino navy patrol boat found a newly built structure on stilts flying a Chinese flag on a submerged reef, some 240 kilometres (149 miles) off the Philippine island of Palawan. Today, Mischief Reef is a fully fledged Chinese military outpost, with a 3,000-metre airfield runway, radar systems and warehouses probably housing surface-to-air missile systems on land reclaimed