Manila's duplicity cannot cover up core issue

A formation of the Nanhai Fleet of China's Navy on Saturday finished a three-day patrol of the Nansha islands in the South China Sea. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Philippines has never stopped playing tricks on the South China Sea issue. It is trying its best to cover up history and the facts, and to confuse the international community over the core issue, which is that the Philippines has not only seized some of China's territory, it wants more.

In its arbitration bid, the Philippines has used every means to whitewash the illegitimacy of its actions, and tried to legalize its untenable and illegal proposition through painstakingly packaging a disguised replacement of concept.

At the same time, Manila has tried its best to stigmatize all of China's legal and rational propositions and measures on the South China Sea issue, and portrayed China as an aggressive big power ignoring international law and bullying smaller countries.

The Philippine's arbitration is a provocation and its proposition is full of conflictions and fabrications.

First, the Philippines' various kinds of "evidence" seriously violate the objective truth that the Philippines is in no position to ask for the South China Sea's sovereignty from China. The Philippine's territorial sovereignty is strictly defined by the agreements between the United States and Spain in 1898 and 1900, as well as the agreement between the US and Britain in 1930.

However, since the 1950s the Philippines has coveted China's islands. For this purpose, Manila has made up various kinds of lies, such as Filipinos discovered "terra nullius islands" in the South China Sea, and has offered justifications without any binding power according to international laws, for example the islands are closer to the Philippines than to China so they belong to the Philippines.