The Philippines has approached neighbors such as Malaysia and Vietnam to discuss a separate code of conduct regarding the South China Sea, its president said yesterday, citing limited progress toward striking a broader regional pact with China.
Relations between the two have grown more tense under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who has increasingly complained about China’s “aggressive” behavior while rekindling strong ties with the Philippines’ sole treaty ally, the US.
Speaking in Hawaii at a livestreamed event, Marcos said that escalating tension in the South China Sea required the Philippines to partner with allies and neighbors to maintain peace in the busy waterway, where the situation had become “more dire than it was before.”
Photo: Bloomberg
He said that China’s military had “started to show interest” in building bases on reefs that were “closer and closer to the Philippine coastline.”
“As I have said before and I will say again, the Philippines will not give up a single square inch of our territory to any foreign power,” Marcos said.
He said that ASEAN members were still waiting on a code of conduct with China, “and the progress has been rather slow unfortunately.”
“We have taken the initiative to approach those other countries around ASEAN with whom we have existing territorial conflicts, Vietnam being one of them, Malaysia being another and to make our own code of conduct,” he said. “Hopefully this will grow further and extend to other ASEAN countries.”
The embassies of China, Malaysia and Vietnam in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment on a possible code.
China said that formulating a code of conduct in the South China Sea was an important task for it and ASEAN countries.
However, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs told a regular news briefing that “any move that deviates from the framework and runs counter to the spirit of the declaration on the conduct of parties in the South China Sea is null and void.”
Additional reporting by AFP
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS