Spratly Islands

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• China and its archrival Taiwan share claims to the Spratly Islands, a hotly contested archipelago in the South China Sea, pictured in a poster in Weifang, China, above. But the two diverge in how they exercise control.

China has built artificial islands that bristle with military installations and missiles.

On Itu Aba, a 110-acre speck dense with banana and coconut trees, the Taiwanese are planning a small hospital to bolster search-and-rescue capacity for nearby heavily trafficked sea lanes.

“We want this to be a peaceful place,” a Taiwanese official told our reporter.

But almost everything about Itu Aba is up for dispute. The Philippines and Vietnam also stake claims, and the U.N. has ruled that it’s just a rock, undercutting the Taiwanese claim to the surrounding waters.