MANILA, Philippines (AP) – US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called on China to comply with a 2016 arbitration ruling that invalidated Beijing’s extensive territorial claims in the South China Sea and warned that Washington had an obligation to defend treaty ally the Philippines if its troops, ships or aircraft were attacked in disputed waters.
Blinken’s statement, issued by the US Embassy in Manila on Tuesday, was issued on the sixth anniversary of the 2016 decision by an arbitral tribunal established in The Hague under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea after the Philippine government complained in 2013 about it. China’s increasingly aggressive behavior in the disputed waters.
China did not participate in the arbitration, dismissing its ruling as a disgrace and continuing to defy it, leading to its entry into territorial disputes with the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries in recent years.
“We once again call on the People’s Republic of China to comply with its obligations under international law and cease its provocative behavior,” Blinken said, using the abbreviation of China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.
“We also reaffirm that an armed attack on the Armed Forces of the Philippines, general ships, or aircraft in the South China Sea would invoke the mutual defense commitments of the United States” under the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, Blinken said.
There was no immediate reaction from Beijing. But Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a press conference in Malaysia’s administrative capital Putrajaya that China is speeding up talks with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes the Philippines and three other countries, to reach a non-aggression pact called a “code of conduct” to turn the South China Sea into a sea Peace and cooperation.”
“We will oppose the confrontation between blocs and the Cold War mentality,” Wang told reporters after meeting his counterpart in Malaysia, the last leg of a five-nation swing tour across Southeast Asia. Did not take any questions.
In addition to China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have had overlapping claims in the crowded waterway, where an estimated $5 trillion of goods pass each year and which is believed to be rich in undersea gas and oil deposits.
The potential flashpoint has become a major front in the rivalry between the United States and China.
Washington claims no claim to the disputed waters, but has deployed Navy ships and Air Force aircraft to patrol the waterway for decades, and says freedom of navigation and overflight is in the national interest of the United States. This provoked angry reactions from China, which accused the United States of interfering in a purely Asian dispute and warned it not to stay away.
Philippine Foreign Minister Enrique Manalo said Tuesday that the arbitration award will be one of the pillars of his new government’s policy and actions in the disputed region and rejected attempts to undermine the “indisputable” award.
“These results are no longer open to denial and refusal and are conclusive because they are indisputable. The award is final,” Manalo said in a statement.
“We firmly reject attempts to undermine it…even to erase it from law, history and our collective memory,” said Manalo, who did not directly name China.
New Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office on June 30 after a landslide electoral victory.
Marcos Jr’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, put the arbitration ruling in the background for years after taking office in 2016 and fostered warm relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping while criticizing US security policies.
In 2019, Duterte said he finally asked Xi to comply with the ruling, but was told emphatically: “We will not budge.”
Marcos Jr. upheld the arbitration award and said he would not allow even one “square millimeter” of Philippine water to be trampled.
But he said in January before he won the presidency that since China refused to recognize the ruling, Duterte’s policy of diplomatic engagement was “really our only option”.
Dozens of left-wing activists and workers protested in front of the Chinese consulate in Manila’s Makati financial district on Tuesday, calling on Beijing to respect the arbitration award, and asking Marcos Jr. to defend the country’s territory and sovereign rights in the South China Sea.
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Associated Press journalists Joel Calupitan and Aaron Favela in Manila and Elaine Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.
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