English Dictionary

An enterprising Filipino recently announced that the Nansha islets, which lie between the southernmost tip of Vietnam and the Philippines, and are scattered in the area of the eight-feet high Itu Aba, were his private property. He argues, surprisingly, that he surveyed them first, though Itu Aba itself has been marked on maps for some time; but the Filipino government has decided to support his claim, if necessary before the United Nations. The Vietnam government has reasserted its own claim both to the Nanshas and to the Paracel islands further north, on the ground that they were formerly French and automatically became Vietnamese when France handed over power. The French agree that they handed over the Paracels, but insist that the transfer did not include Spratley—an outpost of the Nanshas—which they say is still theirs.…If present occupation is the test, the Vietnamese claim to have a garrison in the Paracels, and the Chinese Nationalists are also said to have sent a force there. Both have been outdone in the Nanshas by the private enterprise of another Filipino, who has already issued his own set of stamps in the name of the “Kingdom of Humanity.”