Manila, Philippines –
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken renewed a call for China to comply with a 2016 arbitration ruling that invalidated Beijing’s vast claims in the South China Sea and warned that Washington is obligated to defend China. The Philippines, a treaty ally, if its forces, ships or aircraft are attacked in disputed waters.
Blinken’s statement, issued by the US Embassy in Manila on Tuesday, was released on the sixth anniversary of the 2016 decision by an arbitration tribunal established in The Hague under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea after the Philippine government filed a complaint in 2013 against China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the disputed sea.
China did not participate in the arbitration, dismissed its ruling as a sham and continues to challenge it, leading it into territorial disputes with the Philippines and other Southeast Asian claimant states in recent years.
“We again call on the People’s Republic of China to abide by its obligations under international law and cease its provocative behavior,” Blinken said, using the acronym for China’s formal name.
“We also reaffirm that an armed attack against Philippine armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the South China Sea would invoke the United States’ mutual defense commitments” under the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, Blinken said. .
Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have all had overlapping claims on the busy waterway, which is believed to be rich in underwater gas and oil deposits and where goods and trade worth an estimated $5 trillion are shipped. of dollars. through each year.
The hotspot region has become a key front in the US-China rivalry.
Washington does not claim the disputed waters but has deployed its Navy ships and Air Force planes to patrol the waterway for decades and says freedom of navigation and overflight in the disputed region is in America’s national interest. . That drew angry reactions from China, which accused the United States of meddling in a purely Asian dispute and warned it to stay away.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo said on Tuesday that the arbitration ruling would be a mainstay of the new administration’s policy and actions in the disputed region and rejected attempts to undermine the “undisputed” decision.
“These findings are no longer within the reach of denial and refutation and are conclusive as they are indisputable. The award is final,” Manalo said in a statement.
“We firmly reject attempts to undermine it… even erase it from law, history and our collective memory,” said Manalo, who did not name China but clearly alluded to it.
China would likely frown on Manalo’s stated political stance for the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office on June 30 after a landslide election victory.
Marcos Jr.’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, put the arbitration ruling on the backburner for years after he took office in 2016 and cultivated intimate ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping while often criticizing China’s security policies. USA.
In 2019, Duterte said he finally asked Xi at a meeting in Beijing to comply with the ruling, but the Chinese leader told him flatly: “We will not give in.”
Marcos Jr. upheld the arbitration ruling, saying he would not allow even a “square millimeter” of Philippine waters to be trampled on.
But in an interview with the DZRH radio network in January before he won the presidency, Marcos Jr. said that since China has refused to recognize the ruling, it will not help resolve disputes with Beijing, “so that option is not available.” available to us.”
Marcos Jr. said then that Duterte’s policy of diplomatic engagement with China is “really our only option.”
He faced calls on Tuesday to ask China to abide by the arbitration ruling and reverse Duterte’s soft approach that undermined Philippine sovereignty in the disputed sea.
Dozens of left-wing activists and workers protested outside the Chinese consulate in Manila’s Makati financial district on Tuesday, calling on Beijing to respect the arbitration ruling and for Marcos Jr. to defend the country’s territory and sovereign rights in the China Sea. Southern.
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Associated Press writers Joeal Calupitan and Aaron Favila contributed to this report.