The Philippines could lose the gains it achieved in the international arbitral ruling on the South China Sea should it push raising the issue before the United Nations General Assembly next month, Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said.
Locsin underscored that Manila already won the award and that bringing the claims to the international body risked its reopening.
This is amid the escalating tensions in the region in the wake of the trade war between the United States and China, as the US said Friday it will ban Chinese companies taking part in any Chinese developments in the South China Sea—and Locsin said the Philippines should follow suit.
Meanwhile, an American warship sailed near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, the US Navy said, in what military and diplomatic analysts say is a challenge to Beijing’s claims on the resource-rich waterway and prompting a warning from the Chinese military.
The Thursday operation came a day after China fired ballistic missiles into the sea as part of ongoing live-fire exercises, inflaming already high tensions between Washington and Beijing.
The Chinese military on Friday said the US had “repeatedly provoked trouble in the South China Sea”, urging it to “immediately stop such provocative actions”.
At the same time, the US Defense Department said Chinese test launches of ballistic missiles in the South China Sea were threatening peace and security in the region.
“When you win something, you do not appeal your victory… Because once you throw it to the United Nations, I’m afraid China has the numbers there and it’s about numbers. It’s not about law,” Locsin said in a CNN Philippines interview Friday night.
“What if it reopens? The question is, was it a violation of Philippine sovereignty? Our ruling already defined what’s ours. But if that is the question I’m going to bring up again to another court, they may reopen it. I’m even afraid that some of our neighbors may want to bring it up just precisely to lose it. I trust no one in this world,” he said.
Locsin believes Manila would fail to garner support from most UN member states like it did in the past when it would propose for the ruling’s inclusion or mention in resolutions.
“I was in the United Nations. I can tell you from the major blocks of developing countries, let’s call them that, small countries like the Non-Aligned Movement, they always vote against the inclusion of our Arbitral Award in any resolution by those large voting bodies. We are always rejected; they always go with China,” he said.
“Believe me, the smaller the country, the more insular its character—in that sense, similar to us—the more likely they will not vote with us because they need all the help they can get,” he added.
The South China Sea, where the Spratly Islands are located, is contested by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, and China, which claims almost 80 percent of the waters under its so-called “nine-dash line.”
In a 2016 arbitral ruling, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague invalidated China’s vast claims over the waterway as illegal.
The US regularly conducts “freedom of navigation operations” in the area to challenge Chinese territorial claims.
The US Navy’s Pacific Fleet said in a statement the USS Mustin, a guided-missile destroyer, sailed Thursday “in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands to ensure critical shipping lanes in the area remain free and open.”
The Chinese military on Friday accused the US ship of entering “China’s territorial waters” near the islands “without authorisation.” Chinese forces tracked the warship and then warned it to leave, said military spokesman Li Huamin.
In recent years, China has aggressively pursued its territorial claims in the South China Sea, building small shoals and reefs into military bases with airstrips and port facilities.
Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan also have competing claims in the South China Sea, through which international trade worth trillions of dollars passes a year.
Tensions have risen this week in the area near the Paracel Islands—called Xisha by Beijing—where the Chinese military has been conducting exercises.
Beijing on Tuesday accused Washington of flying a U-2 spy plane into a no-fly zone to disrupt the drills—which included the ballistic missile launches.
The Pentagon then accused China of destabilizing the region and using the military for “unlawful maritime claims” in a statement criticizing the exercises and the use of ballistic missiles in the drills.
Confirming reports that Beijing’s forces launched as many as four ballistic missiles during military exercises around the Paracel islands, the Pentagon said the move called into question China’s 2002 commitment to avoiding provocative activities.
China’s “actions, including missile tests, further destabilize the situation in the South China Sea,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
“Such exercises also violate PRC commitments under the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea to avoid activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability,” it said, referring to China by the initials of its official name, the People’s Republic of China.
Over the past decade China has built up military installations on several disputed reefs and outcroppings in the South China Sea to assert its sovereignty over much of the region against territorial claims by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia.
The Pentagon said the Chinese military’s August 23-29 military exercises near the Paracels — which it calls Xisha — were “the latest in a long string of PRC actions to assert unlawful maritime claims and disadvantage its Southeast Asian neighbors.”
It said the United States had urged China in July to reduce its “militarization and coercion” in the region.
Instead, “The PRC chose to escalate its exercise activities by firing ballistic missiles,” it said.
Earlier Thursday Beijing blasted Washington over its blacklisting of two dozen state-owned Chinese companies involved in building and supplying China’s South China Sea bases.
“The US’s words grossly interfere in China’s internal affairs… it is wholly tyrannical logic and power politics,” said foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.
“China will take firm measures to uphold the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and individuals,” he said.
In a related development US Defense Secretary Mark Esper accused China of “destabilizing” the Pacific region Friday on a whistle-stop trip to the tiny island nation of Palau.
The visit, which lasted barely three hours, comes as Washington attempts to counter Beijing’s efforts to gain influence in the sparsely populated but strategically important Pacific island nations.
Esper said the United States and Palau shared values of freedom “where all countries respect the rules and norms for peace and prosperity of all nations”.
“This is especially important today, as we continue to work alongside our allies and partners to protect that international system that is under threat from China and its ongoing destabilizing activities in the region,” he said.
Beijing has enjoyed recent success in the Pacific, persuading the Solomon Islands and Kiribati last year to switch diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China.
That left Palau as one of Taiwan’s four remaining allies in the Pacific and only 15 worldwide.
The nation of 22,000, which lies about 1,500 kilometers east of the Philippines, has retained strong ties to Taiwan and the United States under Palau President Tommy Remengesau, despite pressure from China to switch.
Remengesau said China had employed “aggressive moves” in the region but he understood why it had won over some island nations.
“It’s no secret that they are loaning money and putting money into the economies of many Pacific island nations,” he told reporters.
“That has an impact on how people view the relationship with those who help them.”
China effectively banned its tourists from visiting Palau in 2018, severing a major income stream in a move seen as retribution over ties with Taiwan, which Beijing sees as part of its territory to be brought back into the fold.
Esper said he and Remengesau had discussed the need to respect “sovereignty of nations of all sizes”.
While Palau is an independent nation, it has no military and the US is responsible for its defense under an agreement with Washington.
Under the deal, the US military has access to the islands, although it currently has no troops stationed there.
A US military radar facility was planned but construction was suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic, with Palau keen to retain its virus-free status.
Remengesau welcomed US efforts to boost its military presence in Indo-Pacific region.
“It gives us those of us in Palau a great sense of security and a sense of stability heading into the future,” he said. With AFP