The Philippine president ends a three-day state visit to China with 14 bilateral agreements and a direct line between the two countries’ foreign ministries. Philippine nationalists and activists want a tougher stance towards China. Marcos Jr’s flexibility will not solve maritime disputes.
Rome (AsiaNews) – Chinese investors have agreed to funnel US$ 22.8 in the Philippines, Manila's Presidential Communications Office said today. The pledge marks Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s three-day visit to China, and has had the effect of moderating his government's rhetoric against China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.
In a joint statement following the meeting between Marcos Jr and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, the two sides agreed to set up a direct communication link between their respective foreign ministries to handle peacefully any dispute involving the South China Sea.
In the Philippines, nationalists and activists actually want their president to enforce a ruling by the International Court of Arbitration to protect their country’s maritime borders from China's territorial claims. In 2016, the court in The Hague (Netherlands) ruled that China's claim to nearly 90 per cent of the South China Sea was “baseless”, a decision Beijing has never accepted.
Together with Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and to a lesser extent Indonesia, the Philippines is opposed to China’s claims. Over the past few years, China has pursued a policy of militarising some islands and coral reefs in the sea. To contain it, US warships and warplanes regularly patrol near these military outposts.
Marcos Jr. said that Xi promised to find a compromise on the problems of Philippine fishermen operating in disputed areas. As Philippine online news website Rappler points out, fisher folk have seen their catch dwindle or dry up completely, either because of larger scale Chinese fishing or harassment by Chinese coast guard vessels.
During the state visit, the two countries signed 14 bilateral agreements, and have expressed willingness to reopen talks on joint oil and gas exploration of the sea basin. In early December, Marcos Jr said his country needed to find ways to exploit hydrocarbon resources in the disputed region, with or without an agreement with China.
The Philippines needs investment to build new infrastructure. Not surprisingly, Marcos Jr. went to Beijing to ask for money. Still his flexibility over the South China Sea does not mean a solution to the crisis is at hand.
Since 2016, as part of a strategy of reducing tensions, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been negotiating a code of conduct with China over the South China Sea; however, this has dragged on with poor results, mainly because the Chinese refuse to make the code legally binding.
Marcos Jr. must also take into account the United States, the Philippines’ main ally. Manila recently reported that Washington wants to build five new military outposts in the country, two of them in the northern province of Cagayan. The area overlooks the Luzon Strait, which separates the Philippines from Taiwan: a focal point in case of conflict between Beijing and Taipei but also for the United States.
The US is in fact developing an active “anti-Navy” defence strategy to prevent Chinese naval attacks against Taiwan, which includes ground forces scattered in the western Pacific and the use of precision missiles to keep Chinese naval forces at bay.