Malacañang on Sunday rejected the call of Chinese President Xi Jinping for bilateral negotiations in the territorial dispute in the South China Sea, pending a decision by the United Nations’s (UN) Permanent Court of Arbitration in the arbitration case filed by the Philippines against China.
Presidential Communications Undersecretary Manuel Quezon III said the Philippines would rather trust the process provided under international law for resolving territorial disputes through arbitration, and assured that the country will abide by whatever decision will come from the arbitration case.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration is expected to promulgate in the next few weeks its decision on the arbitration case filed by the Philippines against China in 2013 to finally resolve the territorial dispute over parts of the South China Sea and stop China’s aggressive and unilateral efforts to exercise dominion over the disputed areas.
Amid the impending decision on the arbitration case, the enforcement of which China is expected to block as it does not recognize the jurisdiction of the UN court, Xi has reiterated his offer for “friendly consultation and negotiation” with the Philippines.
China’s strategy in the past is to deal directly one-on-one with the claimants in the South China Sea, instead of dealing with the claimant countries collectively or under the auspices of international organizations, like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the UN, wherein the individual claimants have greater negotiating power because their cause is supported by world powers like the United States.
But Quezon said the Philippines stands by its legal position that China has no valid claim over the disputed parts of the South China Sea, those being within the territory of the Philippines as defined under its Constitution and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
“We would take that whatever statements are being issued from Beijing are reflecting the Chinese position, which, of course, they have every right to ventilate. But at the same time, we are firm in our stand that we have a strong case and that, more important, having trusted the system, we will abide by whatever is decided,” Quezon added.
Quezon said the Philippines had been demonstrating this strong national position in renaming the sea west of the Philippines as the West Philippine Sea, instead of referring to it as the South China Sea, to which appellation the Philippines objects, considering the remoteness of that area to mainland China.