CHINESE President Xi Jinping is hopeful that rocky relations between China and the Philippines—strained by a territorial dispute in the West Philippine Sea—will improve during the administration of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte.
“The friendly, stable and healthy development of Sino-Philippine relations accords with the basic interest of both countries and both peoples,” Xi said in a statement released after Congress proclaimed Duterte president on Monday. “(I) hope both sides can work hard to push Sino-Philippine relations back onto a healthy development track.”
Incoming Foreign Affairs secretary Perfecto Yasay said bilateral talks could help untangle the territorial dispute between the two countries.
“The Duterte administration is bent on dealing with China through peaceful dialogue,” he said. “There’s no other way but to go bilateral. “We have been pursuing this. I don’t see why we should stop.”
This was in sharp contrast to the Aquino administration’s multi-lateral approach, which sought to bring other claimants in the South China Sea together, and which has sought to shape international public opinion against Beijing.
Aquino has also strengthened the country’s military ties with the United States in a move that has angered China.
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will depart Tuesday for an Asian security summit in Singapore, where Beijing’s military expansion across the South China Sea likely will once again dominate discussions.
Regional neighbors are fretting over what they see as China’s expansionism as it rushes to exert sovereignty over the waterway, a major global shipping route believed to be home to large oil and gas reserves.
China is using dredgers and other tools to convert low-lying ocean features and sandy blips into military bases.
A Pentagon report this month said China has added more than 1,300 hectares of land to the seven features it occupies in the Spratly Islands archipelago.
The so-called Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual meeting in Singapore, will see defense ministers, military chiefs and defense experts from the Asia-Pacific region and beyond discuss regional security issues.
Yasay said the incoming administration would await the ruling by a UN tribunal on a case filed by the Philippines, questioning China’s nine-dash-line claim over almost the entire South China Sea.
China has refused to take part in the proceedings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, saying it had no jurisdiction over the case. A decision is expected this year.
Since his election, Duterte has adopted a more conciliatory tone on the country’s sea dispute with China, in contrast to Aquino’s sharp statements against Beijing.
For weeks now, Filipino fishermen in the Scarborough Shoal have been plying their trade without being harassed by the Chinese Coast Guard, in what could be an early sign of thawing tensions.
This was a far cry from 2012, when China seized the shoal and made it virtually off-limits to Filipino fishermen.
In pushing bilateral talks, Yasay questioned the effectiveness of the Aquino administration’s multilateral approach.
“This is necessary. I don’t think there is any other way to resolve these disputes except talking to each other,” Yasay said.
On Saturday, Duterte said that Beijing must abide by the ruling of the United Nations tribunal on its arbitration case.
While China has snubbed the UN proceeding, Duterte said it must respect the decision of the tribunal, which is expected to be handed out soon.
“If there’s arbitration, I expect China to follow,” he said.
Duterte said he will be working closely with China, in particular in building railways to ease commuters’ woes, but this does not mean his administration will abandon its maritime claims.
“Just because you are building me a railway doesn’t mean I’m abandoning Scarborough Shoal,” he said.
“I told you, that is ours, you have no right to be there in our EEZ [Exclusive Economic Zone.] Whether you believe it or not, [that’s] fine by me, but that will be the predicate of any further discussions about those territories of ours,” he added.
The outgoing administration said bilateral relations between the Philippines and China are not limited to the South China Sea issue.
“When President Aquino met President Xi at a tree planting ceremony during the Apec summit in China in 2014, they exchanged pleasantries on the long history of friendship and cooperation between [the two countries],” Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said.
“Our position has always been that the [dispute] does not represent the totality of our bilateral relations and we continue to foster people to people ties,” Coloma also said. With Bloomberg, AFP