Backed by steep tree-covered hills, the long sandy beach at Yalong Bay is a tropical tourist idyll. The resort on Hainan island, off China’s southern coast, has become popular among urban professionals looking for a break from their hectic lives.
Yalong Bay also has another life. On its eastern reaches, well beyond the strip of five-star hotels, two frigates are docked at a new naval base. And according to satellite pictures published two years ago, on the far side of a peninsula that juts into the bay lie the cavernous entrances to a vast underground submarine base.
The bay is a platform from which China can project naval power into the South China Sea, with its myriad disputed island chains, and potentially beyond into the Indian Ocean. As such, the area has also become an important piece of real estate in the escalating military rivalry between the US and China – and a symbol of one of the most controversial aspects of China’s rise.