Tiny Pacific island hopes to get official status

Taiwan aims to prove Itu Aba is capable of sustaining life

While warships and fishing fleets jockey for dominance of the South China Sea, the 200-odd residents of Itu Aba eke out their days growing vegetables and baking pizza.

With such mundane rituals of daily life, Taiwan sustains a toehold to a strategic struggle that has drawn in the militaries of China and the U.S. Now, six decades after establishing an outpost on this 5,500-square-foot speck of sand, the government in faroff Taipei is seeking to prove it’s an island capable of supporting human life.

“I’m really happy to play a part in upholding our nation’s sovereignty here,” said Lin Fang-tzu, 28, who moved 1,600 kilometres from southern Taiwan eight months ago to serve as an anesthesiology nurse at the island’s Nansha Hospital.

The legal status of islands, rocks and reefs scattered across the South China Sea has taken on new significance as the region braces for a ruling from an international tribunal that could upend a web of territorial disputes. The United Nation’s Permanent Court of Arbitration could, in the next few months, decide on claims by the Philippines that the Spratly Islands are uninhabitable rocks and thus don’t confer rights to exploit surrounding resources.

The Philippine case is aimed at China, which has embarked on a largescale land-reclamation program in the waters and built up its military presence. The U.S., which says it doesn’t take sides on individual claims, has sought to assert free navigation rights by sailing warships through the key shipping corridor, drawing protests from China.

Caught in the middle is Itu Aba, or Taiping Island, which is the largest naturally occurring feature in the chain, and Taiwan, whose claims provide the foundation for China’s. The so-called nine-dashed line that Beijing provides to assert sovereignty over more than 80 per cent of the sea was drafted by the Republic of China government just before civil war forced it to retreat to Taipei in 1949.

“There’s no need to declare our sovereignty over Taiping Island, we’ve been running it successfully for 60 years,” Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou told reporters.