NEW YORK, May 29 (Xinhua) -- An old map published in 1899 by geographer J. Martin Miller shows that islands in the South China Sea have never been Philippine territory, Zeng Yingjing, the owner of the map, has told Xinhua.
The map was included in a book titled "The Twentieth Century ATLAS and Illustrated World," which was purchased by Zeng, a Chinese-American, at a flea market in New York in 2015.
The map shows the boundary of the U.S. possession in the Philippines agreed by the United States and Spanish Peace Commissioner at the Treaty of Paris in 1898.
The boundaries of the Philippines on the map were marked by a red line, which the South China Sea islands, including the Nansha Islands and the Huangyan Island, clearly lie out of.
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