China regulates surveillance over islands

BEIJING - China has published an implementation measure for monitoring the country's islands with planes, the State Oceanic Administration said on Friday.

The implementation defines 11 major items of surveillance over inhabited and uninhabited islands and those with special purposes. It also stipulates that aerial surveillance of the islands should be conducted mainly with marine surveillance planes, taking advantage of photographing, camera shooting, aviation remote sensing, and other measures.

Xie Hongyang, an official with China Marine Surveillance, said islands will be surveyed at least once every year, while some important islands or those with obvious changes will be surveyed at least twice a year. Each island will be photographed for three pictures in every surveillance.

In the meantime, all islands outside the country's flight restriction zone will be surveyed through radar remote sensing measures.

The surveillance information will be shared by marine surveillance law enforcement departments.