Manila-Beijing ties lauded

MANILA: The country’s top diplomat celebrated what he called the mutual support and growing trust between Manila and Beijing as he welcomed his Chinese counterpart for the third time on Saturday.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Manila for an official visit Friday and is expected to depart on Saturday. Wang came to reciprocate Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr.’s visit to China last October 2020.

“We are elated that despite the challenges of the pandemic, our high-level engagements have stayed on track,” Locsin is quoted as addressing Wang in a transcript released by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

“With your third visit to the Philippines and our meeting – only three months since our most recent meeting in beautiful Tengchong City in Yunnan Province – we demonstrate yet again the strong and manifold ties that bind the Philippines and China,” he also said.

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The DFA in an earlier statement said the diplomatic counterparts would hold a bilateral meeting to consider ways to accelerate mutually beneficial cooperation, particularly in the priority areas of trade and investments, infrastructure development, and addressing the pandemic. “With our two nations’ abiding interest in regional stability and the security of our maritime commons, it behooves us to show our ability to rise to the challenge of managing differences peacefully and in accordance with law while making headway towards trust-building and practical concrete mutually beneficial cooperation,” Locsin said.

President Rodrigo Duterte in September last year asserted the 2016 arbitral award invalidating Beijing’s nine-dash line claim over a large part of the South China Sea, including the West Philippine Sea, calling it “beyond compromise.”

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But the next month saw China announce that it had “reached consensus” with the Philippines on joint exploration of oil and gas resources in the South China Sea, just two days after Duterte lifted the moratorium on oil and gas exploration in the resource-rich West Philippine Sea. The announcement was made a few days after Locsin’s visit to China and was not further commented on by the DFA.

Sen. Risa Hontiveros shortly after called on the energy department to discourage service contractors from entering into joint venture agreements with China-owned companies in their oil and gas exploration of the area.

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