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The Spratly Islands
Reefs and islets in the South China Sea claimed by six governments
Scattered across the southern South China Sea, the Spratly Islands are more than a hundred reefs, shoals, cays, and islets whose combined natural land would fit inside a small town, yet they sit at the center of the most crowded sovereignty dispute on the map. China, Taiwan, and Vietnam each claim all of them. The Philippines claims most of them, Malaysia claims features in the south, and Brunei claims an exclusive economic zone that reaches a few southern reefs. Five of the six claimants hold outposts. Around and beneath the features lie rich fisheries, possible oil and gas, and sea lanes that carry a large share of world trade.
The features spread across roughly 425,000 square kilometers of sea, and their natural land above high tide totals only about 4 square kilometers. The largest island, Itu Aba, called Taiping by Taiwan, covers less than half a square kilometer. There is no indigenous population, only garrisons, fishers, and a few civilian settlers. Vietnam occupies the most features, more than 20, and has greatly enlarged its outposts since 2021. The Philippines holds nine, including Thitu, or Pag-asa, which has a small civilian community. China holds seven, which it transformed after 2013 into artificial islands, with runways, harbors, and radar on Fiery Cross, Subi, and Mischief reefs. Malaysia holds several southern features, and Taiwan administers Itu Aba. Brunei occupies none.
Fishers from around the sea used the reefs for centuries, but formal claims crystallized in the 20th century: France annexed several features in the 1930s, Japan occupied them during World War II, and the postwar settlements left sovereignty unassigned. China and Vietnam fought a deadly naval clash at Johnson South Reef in 1988. In 2016 an arbitral tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, in a case brought by the Philippines, ruled that no Spratly feature generates a full exclusive economic zone and that China's claimed historic rights within its nine-dash line have no legal basis. China rejects the ruling. Confrontations persist, most visibly at Second Thomas Shoal, where a Philippine sailor was injured in a July 2026 clash with the Chinese coast guard, each side blaming the other.