Month: July 2009

The always-transparent China has been building a submarine base near Sanya, on Hainan Island off its southern coast.  This represents a further expansion of China’s presence in this South China Sea/Paracel Islands area–a build-up that has been going on for the last twenty years.

What I find interesting is that FoxNews calls this a secret submarine base, even though it is clearly not secret.  I know about it.  You know about it.  The world knows about it.  It’s been known, in fact, since 2002.  So, how secret is it?

Jane’s, the venerable publisher of military periodicals and books, has a more sober take on the matter, simply calling it “a major underground nuclear submarine base.”

As far as villains’ lairs go, the island hideout of Bond character Dr. No is the template from which many other fictional lairs followed.  Dr. No was the first movie in the James Bond series.  It’s got all the typical elements that any good villain needs:

• It’s an island in the Caribbean.
• It has a profit-generating guano plant.
• Walls of bare rock.
• Stolen masterpieces.
• Automatically opening doors.
• A staff of Chinese masseuses.
• Missile silo.
• Fish tanks built into the rock walls.

I’m doing this all off of memory right now, so I’m sure I’m forgetting something.  Amazingly enough, the novel and film are very close.  The movie doesn’t hit as hard on the guano aspect as the novel does.