Image: Photographs and additional reporting by Rosem Morton for The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from wsj.com
From the remote speck of land they call home, the residents of Thitu Island have watched China’s presence creep closer, and grow more assertive, over the past decade.
Boats belonging to China’s fishing militia regularly swarm the waters near Thitu, which lies in the South China Sea and is controlled by the Philippines. On pitch-dark nights, the Filipino islanders can see lights flicker on the horizon, emanating from a Chinese military base
that didn’t exist 10 years ago.
Thitu’s tiny civilian population of 255 people is on the frontlines of Manila’s efforts to fend off Beijing’s growing control over the South China Sea. China claims much of the strategic water way including Thitu, and acuses the Philippines of elegally occupying the island