The Philippine Navy on Thursday shrugged off the presence of Chinese warships during its drills with the United States, Canada, and Australia in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).
The second day of the multilateral maritime cooperative activity (MMCA) saw the four countries conducting antisubmarine warfare drills.
However, the drills saw the continued presence of three People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) ships, according to Navy Spokesperson for the WPS Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad.
Trinidad said PLA-N’s Jiangdao II class corvettes, namely Wuzhou (FSG 626), Huangshan (FFG 570), and Qujing (FSG 668) came as close as four nautical miles from the exercise area.
But their distance “is not a cause for concern,” Trinidad said in a phone interview.
“If they monitor us, we also monitor them,” he added.
The Philippines regularly conducts MMCA with its allied countries amid tensions in the WPS.
“We could expect more MMCAs in the future because the thrust right now is to bring in the international community of like-minded navies and like-minded nations.”
