Fiery Cross Reef (Yongshu Jiao)

Fiery Cross Reef, known in Chinese as Yongshu Jiao, is a militarized artificial island in the Spratly Islands, South China Sea, held and garrisoned by the People's Republic of China and administered as part of Nansha District, Sansha, in Hainan Province. It is the southernmost of the three Chinese island bases in the Spratlys built around airfields, the others being Mischief Reef and Subi Reef, and is claimed also by the Republic of China (Taiwan), the Philippines and Vietnam.

The installation combines a seaport with a co-located airbase, Yongshu Airport, on a reclaimed platform of 274 hectares. The runway, of some 3,125 metres, is long enough to operate the Xian H-6N bomber, which from the reef could conduct operations out to about 5,600 kilometres. Hangar capacity is sufficient for 24 combat aircraft plus four larger airframes. Ground infrastructure includes an early-warning radar site and twelve hardened shelters with retractable roofs for mobile missile launchers. Air defence comprises anti-aircraft guns and a close-in weapon system for missile defence, photographed on the reef from late 2016. The Center for Strategic and International Studies assesses it as the most developed of the Chinese bases in the disputed areas of the South China Sea. The garrison stood at roughly 200 personnel in late 2014 and grew with the addition of airbase support staff. A meteorological station operates on the reef, and the site was submitted by China in 1987 as a tide-gauge location under the UNESCO/IOC Global Sea Level Observing System.

China occupied the reef in early 1988 and selected it in April 1987 for a weather station, the feature being large enough for the purpose and set apart from other occupied reefs; construction ran from February to August 1988. Land reclamation began in 2014 to support an airstrip, seaport and military base, converting the atoll into an artificial island. The runway was completed in January 2016, with the first publicly reported Chinese military jet landing in April 2016.