The earliest evidence of human presence in the nearby region, dating back nearly 50,000 years, has been found in the
Tabon Caves on Palawan in the
Philippine islands. By 2,000 BC, the maritime jade road, an advanced and extensive sea-based trade network, was established by the animist indigenous Austronesian peoples of the
Philippines and
Taiwan. The trade network later expanded to include states in what is now Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Between 600 BC to 3 BC there was an east to west migration by members of the seafaring
Sa Huỳnh culture, who, like the earlier Austronesians who came before them, may have passed through the Spratly Islands on their way to Vietnam. These migrants were the forebears of the
Cham people, an
Austronesian-speaking people that founded the Old
Champa kingdom in mainland Southeast Asia.
Early records and cartography In the
Song Dynasty work
Zhu fan zhi by
Zhao Rugua, the name "Thousand
Li Stretch of Sands" (
Qianli Changsha, ) and the "Ten-Thousand
Li of Stone Pools/Beds" (
Wanli Shitang , or
Wanli Shichuang ) were given, interpreted by some to refer to
Paracel and Spratly respectively.
Wanli Shitang is also recorded in the
History of Yuan to have been explored by the Chinese during the Mongol-led
Yuan dynasty and may have been considered by them to have been within their national boundaries. However, the Yuan also ruled over
Korea,
Outer Mongolia, and parts of modern
Russia. They are also referenced, sometimes with different names, in the Ming dynasty. For example, in the
Mao Kun map dating from
Zheng He's voyage of the early 15th century,
Shixing Shitang () is taken by some to mean Spratly, however different authors interpret the identities of these islands differently. 1755, 1767, 1810, and 1817, but did not officially claim jurisdiction over these islands. An early European map,
A correct chart of the China Seas of 1758 by William Herbert, left the Spratly Islands region (known then as the Dangerous Ground) as largely blank, indicating that region has yet to be properly surveyed, although some islands and shoals at its western edge were marked (one appears at the same place as
Thitu Island). A number of maps of the South China Sea were later produced, but the first map that gives a reasonably accurate delineation of the Spratly Islands region (titled
[South] China Sea, Sheet 1) was only published in 1821 by the hydrographer of the East India Company James Horsburgh after a survey by Captain Daniel Ross. A later 1859 edition of the map named the Spratly Island as Storm Island. However, these nations showed little interest in the islands. In 1883, German boats surveyed the Spratly and the Paracel Islands but eventually withdrew the survey, after receiving protests from the
Guangdong government representing the
Qing dynasty. China sent naval forces on inspection tours in 1902 and 1907 and placed flags and markers on the islands. A Vietnamese map from 1834 also combines the Spratly and Paracel Islands into one region known as "Vạn Lý Trường Sa", a feature commonly incorporated into maps of the era () ‒ that is, the same as the aforementioned Chinese island name
Wanli Changsha. According to
Hanoi, Vietnamese maps record Bãi Cát Vàng (
Golden Sandbanks, referring to both the Spratly and Paracel Islands), which lay near the coast of the central Vietnam, as early as 1838. In 1888 the Central Borneo Company were granted a lease to work guano "on Sprattly island and Amboyna Cay". During the
Second World War troops from
French Indochina and
Japan were in occupation. In 1956 Filipino adventurer
Tomás Cloma Sr. decided to "claim" a part of Spratly islands as his own, naming it the "
Free Territory of Freedomland". In the 1950s, a group of individuals claimed sovereignty over the islands in the name of Morton F. Meads, supposedly an American descendant of a British naval captain who gave his name to Meads Island (Itu Aba) in the 1870s. In an affidavit made in 1971, the group claimed to represent the Kingdom of Humanity/
Republic of Morac-Songhrati-Meads, which they asserted was in turn the successor entity for a supposed Kingdom of Humanity established between the two world wars on Meads Island, allegedly by the son of the British captain. This claim to this would-be
micronation fell dormant after 1972, when several members of the group drowned in a typhoon. File:MAO KUN MAP-19.jpg|In the
Mao Kun map, Spratly Islands are suggested to be the islands at the bottom right (). File:Carta_Hydrographica_y_Chorographica_de_las_Yslas_Filipinas_Dedicada_al_Rey_Nuestro_Señor_por_el_Mariscal_d._Campo_D._Fernando_Valdes_Tamon_Cavallº_del_Orden_de_Santiago_de_Govor._Y_Capn.jpg|The
Velarde map shows Galit, Pancot, and Lumbay, which the Philippines identifies as the
Scarborough Shoal and islands off of
Palawan. It was used in the
South China Sea Arbitration. File:Bajos_de_Paragua,_detail_in_Carta_Hydrographica_y_Chorographica_de_las_Yslas_Filipinas.jpg|The Spratlys, labeled as
Los Bajos de Paragua, off the coast of
Palawan (
Paragua) on the
Velarde map File:1801 Cary Map of the East Indies and Southeast Asia ( Singapore, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Philippines) - Geographicus - EastIndies-cary-1801.jpg|An 1801 Cary Map of the East Indies and Southeast Asia showing Panacot, the Scarborough Shoal, Amphitrite, the Paracels, and what is now known as the Spratlys File:DaiNamNhatThongToanDo 1834-1838.jpg|An 1838 Unified Dai Nam map marking
Trường Sa and
Hoàng Sa, which are considered as Spratly and
Paracel Islands by some Vietnamese scholars File:China Sea - Southern Portion - Eastern Sheet.png|A British chart of the sea in northern Borneo, first issued in 1881 and corrected in 1935
Military conflicts and diplomatic dialogues The following are political divisions for the Spratly Islands claimed by various area nations (in alphabetical order): • Brunei: Part of Brunei's Exclusive Economic Zone • China: Part of
Sansha,
Hainan • Malaysia: Part of
Sabah state • Philippines: Part of
Kalayaan,
Palawan province • Taiwan: Part of
Kaohsiung municipality • Vietnam: Part of
Trường Sa,
Khánh Hòa Province Conflicts in the 19th century In the 19th century, Europeans found that Chinese fishermen from
Hainan annually sojourned on the Spratly islands for part of the year, while in 1877 it was the British who launched the first modern legal claims to the Spratly Islands. Some Chinese scholars and officials argue that the 1887 Sino-French Tonkin Boundary convention signed after the
Sino-French War recognised the sovereignty of China over the Paracel and Spratly islands. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs also try to claim that a 1883 incident involving a German ship conducting surveys in the South China Sea without China's consent was protested with Berlin and the Germans terminated the survey.
Conflicts in the 20th century until 1945 China sent naval forces on inspection tours in 1902 and 1907 and placed flags and markers on the islands. The Qing dynasty's successor state, the Republic of China, claimed the Spratly and Paracel islands under the jurisdiction of Hainan. It occupied a number of the Spratly Islands, including
Taiping Island, built weather stations on two of the islands, and administered them as part of French Indochina. This occupation was protested by the
Republic of China (ROC) government because France admitted finding Chinese fishermen there when French warships visited nine of the islands. In 1935, the ROC government also announced a sovereignty claim on the Spratly Islands.
Japan occupied some of the islands in 1939 during World War II, and it used the islands as a
submarine base for the occupation of Southeast Asia. During the Japanese occupation, these islands were called
Shinnan Shoto (), literally the New Southern Islands, and together with the Paracel Islands (), they were put under the governance of the Japanese authority in
Taiwan on 30 March 1939. Japan occupied the Paracels and the Spratly Islands from February 1939 to August 1945. since the Allied powers assigned the Republic of China to receive Japanese surrenders in that area, The Republic of China drew up the map showing the U-shaped claim on the entire South China Sea, showing the Spratly and Paracels in Chinese territory, in 1947. The Chinese
Kuomintang force withdrew from most of the Spratly and Paracel Islands after they retreated to Taiwan from the opposing
Chinese Communist Party due to their losses in the
Chinese Civil War and the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. , Taiping Island is administered by Taiwan. After pulling out its garrison in 1950 when the Republic of China evacuated to Taiwan, when the Filipino Tomas Cloma uprooted an ROC flag on Itu Aba and laid claim to the Spratly Islands, Taiwan again regarrisoned Itu Aba in 1956. In 1946, the Americans allegedly reminded the Philippines at its independence that the Spratly Islands were not Philippine territory, both to not anger
Chiang Kai-shek in China and because the Spratly Islands were not part of the Philippines per the
1898 treaty Spain signed with the United States. Taiwan's garrison from 1946 to 1950 and 1956-now on Itu Aba represents an "effective occupation" of the Spratly Islands. China established a coastal defence system against Japanese pirates or smugglers. (South Vietnam) on
Southwest Cay, Spratly Islands, defining the cay as part of Vietnamese territory (
Phước Tuy Province). Used from 22 August 1956 until 1975, when replaced by another one from the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam (successor state after the
Fall of Saigon) North Vietnam seemed to have recognised China's claims on the Paracels and Spratly Islands during the
Vietnam War as it was being supported by China. In 1958 China issued a declaration defining its territorial waters that encompassed the Spratly Islands.
North Vietnam's prime minister,
Phạm Văn Đồng, sent a formal note to
Zhou Enlai, stating that the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) respected a Chinese statement, which had mentioned the Paracels and the Spratlys by name as belonging to China, regarding the 12-
nautical mile limit of its territorial waters. China also cites correspondence from the Vietnamese government or officials on two other occasions. In 1983, Vietnamese forces occupying
Amboyna Cay fired on a
DXpedition boat flying a German flag, killing one passenger but allowing the remaining passengers and crew to escape in a rescue dinghy. Adrift for ten days, two surviving passengers and both crew members were saved by a Japanese freighter. In 1987, China installed a small military structure on
Fiery Cross Reef under the pretext of building an oceanic observation station and installing a
tide gauge for the
Global Sea Level Observing System. After a
deadly skirmish with the Vietnamese Navy, China installed some military structures on more reefs in the vicinity of the Philippines and Vietnamese occupied islands and this led to escalating tensions between these countries and China over the status and ownership of reefs. In 1988, the Vietnamese and Chinese navies engaged in a
skirmish in the area of Johnson South Reef (also called Gạc Ma Reef in Vietnam and Yongshu Reef in China). Under President
Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan stated that "legally, historically, geographically, or in reality", all of the South China Sea and Spratly islands were Taiwan's territory and under Taiwanese sovereignty, and denounced actions undertaken there by Malaysia and the Philippines, in a statement on 13 July 1999 released by the foreign ministry of Taiwan. Taiwan and China's claims "mirror" each other; during international talks involving the Spratly islands, China and Taiwan have cooperated with each other since both have the same claims. It was unclear whether France continued its claim to the islands after World War II, since none of the islands, other than Taiping Island, was habitable. The
South Vietnamese government took over the
Trường Sa administration after the defeat of the French at the end of the
First Indochina War. "The French bestowed its titles, rights, and claims over the two island chains to the Republic of Vietnam (RoV) in accordance with the
Geneva Accords", said Nguyen Hong Thao, Associate Professor at Faculty of Law, Vietnam National University. In 1999, a Philippine navy ship (Number 57 –
BRP Sierra Madre) was purposely run aground near
Second Thomas Shoal to enable establishment of an outpost. it had not been removed, and Filipino marines have been stationed aboard since the grounding.
Conflicts in the 21st century Taiwan and mainland China are largely strategically aligned on the Spratly islands issue, since they both claim exactly the same area, so Taiwan's control of Itu Aba (Taiping) island is viewed as an extension of China's claim. Taiwan and China both claim the entire island chain, while all the other claimants only claim portions of them. China has proposed co-operation with Taiwan against all the other countries claiming the islands. Taiwanese lawmakers have demanded that Taiwan fortify Itu Aba (Taiping) island with weapons to defend against the Vietnamese, and both China and Taiwanese NGOs have pressured Taiwan to expand Taiwan's military capabilities on the island, which played a role in Taiwan expanding the island's runway in 2012. China has urged Taiwan to co-operate and offered Taiwan a share in oil and gas resources while shutting out all the other rival claimants. Taiwanese lawmakers have complained about repeated Vietnamese aggression and trespassing on Taiwan's Itu Aba (Taiping), and Taiwan has started viewing Vietnam as an enemy over the Spratly Islands, not China. Taiwan's state run oil company
CPC Corporation's board director Chiu Yi has called Vietnam as the "greatest threat" to Taiwan. China views Taiwan's expansion of its military and airstrip on Taiping as benefiting China's position against the other rival claimants from southeast Asian countries. Taiwan performed live fire military exercises on Taiping island in September 2012; reports said that Vietnam was explicitly named by the Taiwanese military as the "imaginary enemy" in the drill. Vietnam protested against the exercises as violation of its territory and "voiced anger", demanding that Taiwan stop the drill. Among the inspectors of the live fire drill were Taiwanese national legislators, adding to the tensions. In May 2011, Chinese patrol boats attacked two Vietnamese oil exploration ships near the Spratly Islands. Also in May 2011, Chinese naval vessels opened fire on Vietnamese fishing vessels operating off East London Reef (Da Dong). The three Chinese military vessels were numbered 989, 27 and 28, and they showed up with a small group of Chinese fishing vessels. Another Vietnamese fishing vessel was fired on near
Fiery Cross Reef (Chu Thap). The Chief Commander of Border Guards in Phú Yên Province, Vietnam, reported that a total of four Vietnamese vessels were fired upon by Chinese naval vessels. These incidents involving Chinese forces sparked mass protests in Vietnam, especially in
Hanoi and
Ho Chi Minh City, and in various Vietnamese communities in the West (namely in the US state of California and in Paris) over attacks on Vietnamese citizens and the intrusion into what Vietnam claimed was part of its territory. In June 2011, the Philippines began officially referring to parts of the South China Sea as the "
West Philippine Sea" and the
Reed Bank as "Recto Bank". In July 2012, the
National Assembly of Vietnam passed a law demarcating Vietnamese sea borders to include the Spratly and Paracel Islands. In 2010, it was reported that the former Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad believed Malaysia could profit from China's economic growth through co-operation with China, and said that China "was not a threat to anyone and was not worried about aggression from China", as well as accusing the US of provoking China and trying to turn China's neighbours against China. Malaysian authorities displayed no concern over China conducting a military exercise at James Shoal in March 2013, with its
Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein suggested they might work with China and saying that Malaysia had no problem with China patrolling the South China Sea, and telling ASEAN, America, and Japan that "Just because you have enemies, doesn't mean your enemies are my enemies". However, until present Malaysia still maintained balanced relations with the countries involved in this dispute. But since China has started encroaching its territorial waters, Malaysia has become active in condemning China. The editorial of the Taiwanese news website
Want China Times accused America of being behind the May 2014 flareup in the South China Sea, saying that Vietnam rammed a Chinese vessel on 2 May over an oil rig drilling platform and the Philippines detained 11 Chinese fishermen because of Obama's visit to the region and that they were incited by America "behind the scenes".
Want China Times claimed America ordered Vietnam on 7 May to complain about the drilling platform, and noted that a joint military exercise was happening at this time between the Philippines and America, and also noted that the American
New York Times newspaper supported Vietnam. In a series of news stories on 16 April 2015, it was revealed, through photos taken by
Airbus, that China had been building an airstrip on Fiery Cross Reef, one of the southern islands. The runway covers a significant portion of the island, and is viewed as a possible strategic threat to other countries with claims to the islands, such as
Vietnam and the
Philippines. Champa historically had a large presence in the South China Sea. The Vietnamese broke Champa's power in
an invasion of Champa in 1471, and then finally conquered the last remnants of the Cham people in an invasion in 1832. A Cham named Katip Suma who received Islamic education in Kelantan declared a
Jihad against the Vietnamese, and fighting continued until the Vietnamese crushed the remnants of the resistance in 1835. The Cham organisation Front de Libération du Champa was part of the
United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races, which waged war against the Vietnamese for independence in the
Vietnam War along with the
Montagnard and
Khmer Krom minorities. The last remaining FULRO insurgents surrendered to the United Nations in 1992. The Vietnamese government fears that evidence of
Champa's influence over the disputed area in the South China Sea would bring attention to human rights violations and killings of ethnic minorities in Vietnam such as in the 2001 and 2004 uprisings, and lead to the issue of Cham autonomy being brought into the dispute, since the Vietnamese conquered the Hindu and Muslim
Cham people in a war in 1832. Japanese scholar Taoka Shunji said in a journal article that the assumption amongst many Japanese people that the territory of the Philippines was being invaded by China, was incorrect. He pointed out that the Spratly islands were not part of the Philippines, when the US acquired the Philippines from Spain in the
Treaty of Paris in 1898, and when the Japanese-ruled Taiwan itself had annexed the Spratly islands in 1938, the US-ruled Philippines did not challenge the move and never asserted that it was their territory. He also pointed out that other countries did not need to do full land reclamation since they already control islands, and that the reason China engaged in extensive land reclamation is because they needed it to build airfields since China only has control over reefs. The "Moro" as "people", is used to describe both the Filipino Muslims and their homeland. Ancestors of Moro people were the owners of Spratly Islands prior to the arrival of the Spanish colonials in the 16th century, according to the Sultan of Sulu in the southern Philippines reported in a local paper. "China has no right over the Spratly Islands in what it calls the South China Sea because that is part of our ancestral domain," Majaraj Julmuner Jannaral, Sultanate information officer, told the Philippine Star. "The Spratly Archipelago is part of the Sulu Sea (the inner area around the islands in the southern Philippines, which is part of the
West Philippine Sea (designation of parts of the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines to be part of its EEZ)," Jannaral concluded. "Exploration of the marine territory and the waters around the Spratly Archipelago, Palawan in southwestern Philippines and the southern Philippines, belong to the residents in those areas," he added. The Sultanate of Sulu claims historic proprietary rights over the Spratly Islands since before the Spanish colonial era. Various incidents of fishing boats being harassed by Chinese warships have occurred. At least 2 vessels were rammed or sunk. One was a Vietnamese ship attacked by a Chinese coastguard vessel, and another was a Filipino ship rammed and sunk by a Chinese fishing boat who let the Filipino fishermen drift at sea without giving aid. The stranded fishermen were later rescued by a Vietnamese ship. In 2017, the United States despite not being a claimant in the Spratly dispute, reported using
freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) to challenge what it deemed as excessive and illegal maritime claims from multiple Asia-Pacific states including Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Vietnam. In 2022, Vietnam demanded that Taiwan cease conducting
live fire exercises at the Spratly Islands.
2016 arbitration In January 2013, the Philippines initiated arbitration proceedings against China under the
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) across a range of issues, including the latter's historic rights claims over parts or all of the Spratly Islands inside the
nine-dash line. A tribunal of arbitrators constituted under Annex VII of
UNCLOS appointed the
Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) as registry to the proceedings. On 12 July 2016, the arbitral tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines on most of its submissions. While it would not "rule on any question of sovereignty over land territory and would not delimit any maritime boundary between the Parties", it concluded that China had not historically exercised exclusive control within the nine-dash line, hence has "no legal basis" to claim "historic rights" to resources. It criticized China's land reclamation projects and construction of artificial islands in the Spratly Islands, saying that they had caused "severe harm to the coral reef environment". Finally, it characterized
Taiping Island and other features of the Spratly Islands as "rocks" under UNCLOS, and therefore are not entitled to a 200 nautical mile
exclusive economic zone. The award was ruled as final and non-appealable by either country. China rejected the ruling, calling it "ill-founded". Taiwan, which currently administers Taiping Island, the largest of the Spratly Islands, also rejected the ruling. , 26 governments support the ruling, 17 issued generally positive statements noting the ruling but not called for compliance, and eight rejected it. The governments in support were
Australia,
Austria,
Belgium,
Canada, the
Czech Republic,
Denmark,
Finland,
France,
Germany,
Greece,
India,
Ireland,
Italy, Japan, the
Netherlands,
New Zealand, the Philippines,
Poland,
Portugal,
Romania,
Slovakia,
South Korea,
Spain,
Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the US; the eight in opposition were China,
Montenegro,
Pakistan, Russia,
Sudan,
Syria, Taiwan, and
Vanuatu. The
United Nations itself does not have a position on the legal and procedural merits of the case or on the disputed claims, and the Secretary-General expressed his hope that the continued consultations on a Code of Conduct between
ASEAN and China under the framework of the Declaration of the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea will lead to increased mutual understanding among all the parties. ==Transportation and communication==