03-07-2025
PH welcomes Quad's statement of concern on South China Sea situation
The Philippines on Thursday welcomed the strongly worded statement issued by top diplomats of the United States, Japan, Australia and India condemning coercive and unilateral actions in the disputed South China Sea.
The foreign ministers of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad met in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday where they reaffirmed their commitment to a "free and open Indo-Pacific" amid the increasingly assertive posturing by China in the disputed waters and in the East China Sea, where Japan and China have competing claims.
Manila said the joint communique issued by the ministers at the end of their meeting reflects the growing international concern on the increasingly assertive and dangerous actions threatening the region's peace and security.
Without naming China, the US's Marco Rubio, India's S. Jaishankar, Japan's Takeshi Iwaya, and Australia's Penny Wong expressed "strong opposition to any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion."
"By highlighting the continuing dangerous and provocative actions, and the use of force and coercion in the South China Sea, the Quad Foreign Ministers has kept focus on the incidents that the Philippines has regularly contended with in the West Philippine Sea," a statement by the Department of Foreign Affairs said.
"Their statement demonstrates the strong objection by the international community against such illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive actions in the West Philippine Sea and the South China Sea."
In 2012, President Benigno Aquino III signed an administrative order renaming the stretch of waters in the South China Sea closer to the Philippines' western coast as West Philippine Sea.
The DFA also thanked the Quad ministers' "unequivocal support" for the 2016 arbitral tribunal decision that denigrated China's massive claim in the strategic waters.
The Philippine government challenged the validity of China's sprawling territorial claims in the South China Sea and sought to clarify the territorial entitlements of certain Chinese-occupied features under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas, or UNCLOS. Manila won the case against China, which refused to recognize the ruling.
The landmark decision further "cemented" its status as "an unassailable part of the corpus of international law," the DFA said.
"Such a landmark ruling under international law deserves full compliance in furtherance of the peaceful settlement of disputes," it added.
China claims the South China Sea virtually in its entirety and has deployed much larger fleets of coast guard, navy and suspected maritime militia ships in the past years to assert that extensive claim against smaller claimant states, which are the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.
Confrontations have spiked between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy ships in the disputed waters in recent years.
"Desiring to maintain regional peace and stability in the South China Sea and in the wider Indo-Pacific, the Philippines will continue to uphold the rules-based order governed by international law, particularly UNCLOS, and will continue to prioritize effective diplomacy and the constructive management of differences in addressing the situation at sea," the DFA said. — BM, GMA Integrated News
