If the Filipinos on the remote South China Sea island of Thitu had binoculars, they might just be envious of how their neighbors on the next island live.
Just 15 miles (24 km) across the shimmering sea from this rundown outpost of the Philippines lies a different world shown by an unbroken line of new, four-story white buildings. Radar towers and a lighthouse complete Subi Reef, a mini city China has raised from the sea at an astonishing pace since 2013.
Subi symbolizes China's increasingly assertive claim to most of the South China Sea, a claim it reinforces in building man-made islands from dredged sand and equipping them with runways, hangars and surface-to-air-missiles.