PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte on Monday visited Chinese warships docked in his hometown and raised the prospect of future joint exercises, highlighting his vow to improve ties with Beijing that soured over competing claims in the South China Sea.
Duterte made his visit a day after issuing a chairman’s statement on behalf of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations bloc that took a soft stance towards Chinese expansionism and island-building in the waterway.
Duterte praised the Chinese Navy’s flagship destroyer Chang Chun, which was docked at the Sasa Port in Davao City, as “very impressive.”
“It’s all carpeted inside. It’s like a hotel,” he said after being presented with a Chinese naval cap.
“This is part of confidence-building and goodwill and to show we are friends and that is why I welcome them here,” Duterte said of the three-vessel flotilla that arrived in Davao City on Mindanao on Sunday.
Asked about possible joint exercises between the Philippines and China, Duterte said “Yes, I said I agree. There can be joint exercises.”
He suggested they be held in the Sulu Sea where Muslim extremist pirates have been active in recent months.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, however, said the joint war games “might take a while” as these would need the concurrence of Congress for a possible visiting forces agreement.
After his visit to the Chinese destroyer, the President said the repairs to the facilities on Philippine-held islands that are also claimed by China would continue, despite protests from Beijing.
“That is part of our duty as nation,” he said.
Duterte, elected last year, has distanced himself from traditional longtime ally the United States. He has played down his country’s territorial dispute with China in favor of seeking greater economic aid and investment from it.
China has sparked regional concern by turning reefs and shoals in contested areas into artificial islands, installing military facilities and airstrips on some of them.
But in the statement issued after he hosted the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Manila, Duterte merely took note of “concerns expressed by some leaders over recent developments in the area.”
He ignored last year’s international ruling outlawing China’s sweeping claims to the key waterway.
Asean members the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei claim parts of the waterway, but China insists it has sovereign rights over nearly all of it.
Duterte has said the Philippines and other nations are helpless to stop the island-building, so there is no point challenging China in diplomatic and legal circles.
China is not a member of the 10-nation Asean, but its ambassador to Manila worked hard to influence the tenor and content of the chairman’s statement, diplomats said.
The visit of the Chinese vessels to Davao rather than Manila is widely seen as a personal gesture to Duterte.
It is the first Chinese navy port call to the country since 2010, the Philippine Navy said, adding that “goodwill games” of basketball and tug-of-war were staged between the Chinese sailors and their Filipino counterparts in Davao.
Opposition legislator Gary Alejano, a former military officer, said that in the Asean summit, “they [China] won by convincing Duterte not to include any statement about the [international] ruling.”
“To make matters worse, Duterte even visited the Chinese warships. That only shows the President is trying everything to appease China,” Alejano said.
“It is not about an independent foreign policy. It is about selling out and capitulating to China.” With AFP
