Last week Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua told the press that Beijing hopes the incoming administration will turn a “new chapter” and resume bilateral talks with China over ongoing maritime disputes.
He said that, regardless of the upcoming decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration on the South China Sea case, the two countries should focus on areas where both can benefit rather than on those where they differ.
Malacañang quickly rejected the overtures, saying the proposal is effectively asking the Philippines to reverse its current foreign policy. Ever since the disputes intensified, the Aquino administration consistently stood pat on its multilateral approach to the territorial dispute, as there are other claimants to the disputed area.
Embarking on bilateral talks also allows China to use as powerful leverage its might, money and even domestic influence over Chinese-Filipino businessmen and politicians. In short, the odds are overwhelmingly in China’s favor if we went mano a mano. Hence, the country brought the matter to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague, a more balanced dispute-resolution arm of the United Nations.
The incoming administration should stay the course. China’s belligerent behavior in the West Philippine Sea is a blatant flouting of international law and diplomacy that allows even disputant nations to act toward each other with civility and sobriety. China is dangerously testing the Philippines’s and its allies’ will to fight, and recklessly risking armed conflict over a vital maritime trade artery—a prospect that obviously would hurt all and help none.
Bilateral discussions, however, should not be rejected outright. Resolving the overarching maritime disputes is critical to the long-term growth, stability and prosperity of the Philippines and of the entire Asean. Hence, we should consider every diplomatic channel, every rule of law, good offices of allies and friends, to break the standoff.
In 2013 in an Angara Center for Law and Economics conference on the maritime disputes, a panel of experts recommended the disputing parties to work on forging doable agreements on nonsovereignty issues, i.e., fisheries regulation and environmental protection. Such agreements may be peripheral to the central dispute, but they can supply the first building blocks to a wider arrangement.
The Philippines, it’s important to remember, before any bilateral talks begin, must demand that China give up their forcible occupation of the disputed areas—including the Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys, the Reed Bank and the Scarborough Shoal. For how can one negotiate in good faith and a truly honest-to-goodness negotiations take place, when the other side already controlled and occupied the object of the negotiation?
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