> it's so odd that immensely huge features like these are still not yet charted
The fact that this was in the South China Sea makes me wonder if the reason it's uncharted is that the Chinese recently created it; for some time they have been building artificial islands in the South China Sea in order to claim that entire body of water as Chinese territorial waters. (It's outrageous that this doesn't get a lot more international attention; it's as if the United States started building artificial islands around the boundary of the Gulf of Mexico in order to declare all of that to be US territorial waters. Imagine the outcry.)
The South China Sea issue does get a fair amount of attention.
It is very unlikely that this is the cause of the Muirfield Seamount. They would have had to artificially create an underwater mountain taller than Mount Rainier to do so. The surrounding water is 16,000 feet deep.
That seamount was above water until the end of the Younger dryas, and the 100+ meters of sea level rise that came with it. Perhaps it was once a coral reef?
> It gets disproportionate "international" attention in US-led countries considering PRC was 2nd last out of 6 claimants in SCS to conduct land reclamation.
Are you sure it's not just proportionate to the amount of land? A quick check puts Vietnam at something like ~50 hectares, Philippines at ~15 hectares, and China at ~1300 hectares
Proportional to gpd and capability more apt comparison. PRC has greater gdp and infra capability than everyone else combined, so should not be surprising that PRC can do more with comparable less percent of GDP dedicated. China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) dredging group responsible for much of island building is also industry leader in reclaimation. The TLDR is there was a SCS arms race and PRC responding at PRC scale is going to naturally dwarf everyone else. Note ongoing anxiety with Chinese military build up is over PRC spending sub ~2% on defense - what US expects NATO to contribute. PRC isn't being excessive, she's simply massive and more efficient relative to everyone else.
Mostly academic sources, i.e. Taylor Fravel who specializes in PRC territorial disputes from back in the day had a detailed timeline iirc. Excerpt from report by asistant secretary of defense from 2015. Note date range to 2014 to conveniently overlook fact that PRC began reclaimation in Dec 2013. And emphasis that PRC and Brunai did not have airstrips / serious military projection capabilities which sparked reclaimation race.
>Over the past two decades, all of the territorial claimants, other than Brunei, have developed outposts in the South China Sea, which they use to project civilian or maritime presence into surrounding waters, assert their sovereignty claims to land features, and monitor the activities of other claimants. In the Spratly islands, Vietnam has 48 outposts; the Philippines, 8; China, 8; Malaysia, 5, and Taiwan, 1. All of these same claimants have also engaged in construction
activity of differing scope and degree. The types of outpost upgrades vary across claimants but broadly are comprised of land reclamation, building construction and extension, and defense emplacements. Between 2009 and 2014, Vietnam was the most active claimant in terms of both outpost upgrades and land reclamation, reclaiming approximately 60 acres. All territorial claimants, with the exception of China and Brunei, have also already built airstrips of varying sizes and functionality on disputed features in the Spratlys. These efforts by claimants have resulted in a tit-for-tat dynamic which continues to date.
The fact that this was in the South China Sea makes me wonder if the reason it's uncharted is that the Chinese recently created it; for some time they have been building artificial islands in the South China Sea in order to claim that entire body of water as Chinese territorial waters. (It's outrageous that this doesn't get a lot more international attention; it's as if the United States started building artificial islands around the boundary of the Gulf of Mexico in order to declare all of that to be US territorial waters. Imagine the outcry.)