The Philippines and the international community should pressure China into behaving responsibly amid continued tensions in the West Philippine Sea, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said Friday.
Teodoro said China has been using “swarming tactics” within the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). He said that the Philippines should “move them (Chinese ships) out,” but that this is easier said than done.
The Defense chief believes China is turning the South China Sea “into a lake of China” by deploying its aggressive Coast Guard and not its highly armed and missile engagement-capable military vessels in the disputed waterway.
“That is why it is using coast guard vessels which are huge and massive equivalent to naval vessel—to enforce domestic and criminal Chinese laws in the whole South China Sea,” he told ANC’s Headstart.
“This is part of their illegal narratives [to] pound into submission other countries to acquiesce into their definition of what international law with respect to the law of the sea is,” Teodoro added.
Meanwhile, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) said it will not counter the situation in the WPS with the “same level of aggression and use arms,” regardless of China’s continued aggression in the hotly contested region.
In an episode of The Mangahas Interviews on GMA TV, PCG spokesperson for the WPS Commodore Jay Tarriela said President Marcos has instructed them not to be aggressive towards China, as the possible response may be too much for the Philippines to handle.
“Despite the harassment, despite the aggressive behavior of China Coast Guard, we’re not going to respond with the same level of aggression,” Tarriela said.
“We have to make sure that we are going to maintain cooler heads and we are not going to cross that line of doing another aggressive activity because they might counter respond that we couldn’t handle,” he added.
This developed as Philippine Army chief Lt. Gen. Roy Galido and other top Army officers from Japan, the United States and Australia held their first meeting in the Land Forces Summit (LFS) in Tokyo, Japan.
The four-way summit, hosted by the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) from Dec. 12 to 14, aimed to build relations among countries in the Indo-Pacific region.
Army public affairs office chief Lt. Col. Louie Dema-ala said the summit is the first of top Army leaders from the four nations.
“The summit served as a platform where the top Army leaders discussed the current strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific Region and exchanged views on defense cooperation,” Dema-ala said.
Galido was joined by JGSDF chief-of-staff Gen. Yasunori Morishita, US Army Pacific chief Gen. Charles Flynn, US Marine Corps Forces commander Gen. William Jurney, Lt. Gen. Simon Stuart, the chief of the Australian Army, and Philippine Marine Corps Commandant Maj. Gen. Arturo Rojas.