Jin Zhirui, who teaches at the Air Force Command School and was once affiliated with the operations department of the PLA Air Force Headquarters, quite unusually for a high-ranking PLA officer disclosed during a national security dialogue session on November 22, 2014, at the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, that "There is a need for a base to support our radar system and intelligence-gathering activities." China has done land reclamation work at six of the seven reefs in the islands it calls Nansha. IHS Jane's, a defense publication, reported on November 20, that China was in the process of constructing an artificial island on Fiery Cross Reef at least 3,000 meters long and between 200 and 300 meters wide that could be made into a runway.