BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines has long pinned its hopes on the international community to woo sympathy for its groundless claim for some of China's islands in the South China Sea.
However, facts speak louder than words. The following are ironclad facts about Manila's notorious acts of illegal encroachment upon China's Nansha Islands.
Historically, the Philippine territory was defined and demarcated by a series of treaties, including the Treaty of Peace of Paris 1898 between the United States and Spain, the U.S.-Spanish Treaty of Washington of 1900, and the 1930 Convention regarding the Boundary between the Philippine Archipelago and the State of North Borneo between the United States and Britain.
All the above-mentioned treaties clearly indicate that the west boundary of the Philippine territory was 118 degrees east longitude. This borderline was recognized and reaffirmed by the 1935 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines.
The Nansha Islands were not included nor recorded in any of the aforesaid treaties. But the Philippines began to covet those islands in the 1930s.
On Aug. 12, 1933, in a letter to the then U.S. governor of the Philippines, a former senator of the U.S.-ruled Philippine Islands attempted to claim that part of the Nansha Islands belonged to the Philippine territory on account of "geographical proximity."
However, the U.S. side rejected the Philippines' claims in August 1935, pointing out that there exists a geographical and natural separation between the Nansha Islands and the Palawan Island along with its affiliated islands.
The Nansha Islands are separated from the Philippine territory by the 1,300-2,600 meter deep Palawan Trench along the Palawan Passage.
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