[In a landmark ruling last July, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, based in The Hague, delivered a sweeping rebuke of China’s behavior in the South China Sea, including the creation of islands that could be used for military purposes, and found that its claim of sovereignty over the waters had no legal basis. However, there is no legal mechanism for enforcing the decision, and Beijing has refused to abide by it.]
By Felipe Villamor
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President
Xi Jinping of China, right, with President Rodrigo Duterte of the
Philippines
in October in Beijing. Credit How Hwee Young/European
Pressp
hoto Agency
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MANILA
— China’s president warned
the Philippines that it would go to war if Manila insisted on enforcing an
international arbitration decision rejecting China’s claims over disputed areas
of the South China Sea, the Philippine president said in a televised speech on
Friday.
Although both sides pledged for now to talk
and to avoid confrontation, the remarks by the Philippine president, Rodrigo
Duterte, highlighted the stakes in a part of Asia that has become a
geopolitical flash point. The warning — which Beijing did not immediately
confirm — also draws attention to a policy dilemma for the United States, which
is trying to maintain its naval dominance in the Pacific in the face of China’s
military buildup and its construction of artificial islands in disputed waters.
In a landmark ruling last July, the Permanent
Court of Arbitration, based in The Hague, delivered a sweeping rebuke of
China’s behavior in the South China Sea, including the creation of islands that
could be used for military purposes, and found that its claim of sovereignty
over the waters had no legal basis. However, there is no legal mechanism for
enforcing the decision, and Beijing has refused to abide by it.
In a speech on Friday to the Philippine coast
guard, in the southern city of Davao, Mr. Duterte claimed that President Xi
Jinping of China had cautioned him against trying to enforce the ruling. Mr. Xi
said the two countries could eventually discuss it, “but it cannot be done
now,” Mr. Duterte said.
“We intend to drill oil there, if it’s yours,
well, that’s your view, but my view is I can drill the oil, if there is some
inside the bowels of the earth, because it is ours,” Mr. Duterte quoted Mr. Xi
as telling him.
Mr. Duterte described Mr. Xi’s position as,
“We’re friends, we don’t want to quarrel with you,” but “if you force the
issue, we’ll go to war.”
Mr. Duterte did not say when the exchange
with Mr. Xi took place, but his national security adviser, Hermogenes Esperon Jr.,
said the leaders discussed the issue during a recent meeting in Beijing on
China’s “One Belt, One Road” trade and investment initiative.
The waters of the South China Sea are claimed
by numerous countries, including Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and
Vietnam. The tribunal in The Hague affirmed the Philippines’ sovereign rights
in its 200-mile exclusive economic zone, where it can access oil and gas
fields. It also invalidated China’s so-called nine-dash line, an expansive
sovereignty claim on Chinese maps.
The Chinese Embassy could not be reached for
comment on Friday, but Mr. Duterte’s claims are widely expected to raise new
tensions.
The 72-year-old Mr. Duterte, a former
longtime mayor of Davao, is fond of making statements that provoke and at times
befuddle the public.
His remarks about Mr. Xi came in one of his
four scheduled speeches on Friday, a day after China and the 10-country
Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed in principle to push for a draft
framework of a “code of conduct” to govern actions in the region.
The agreement was reached after a meeting in
the southern Chinese city of Guiyang, according to the Philippine Foreign
Ministry.
“The Philippines welcomes the finalization by
Asean and China senior officials of the draft of the framework of the code of
conduct,” the ministry said on Friday, without providing details.
The document is to be presented to the
foreign ministers of Asean and China at their post-ministerial conference in
Manila in August, it said.
Also on Friday, the Philippine envoy to
China, Jose Santiago Santa Romana, held a meeting with a Chinese vice minister
for foreign affairs, Liu Zhenmin, to discuss the dispute over the South China
Sea in a “frank, in-depth and friendly manner.” Both sides agreed to cooperate
and “find ways forward,” the Philippine ministry said.
Both sides affirmed the importance of
“maintaining and promotion of peace and stability, freedom of navigation in and
overflight above the South China Sea, addressing their territorial and jurisdictional
disputes by peaceful means,” the ministry said.
Mr. Duterte has played down the conflict
since assuming office last year, taking a much less confrontational stance
toward the disputed waters than his predecessor, Benigno S. Aquino III. He has drawn
closer to China, in the hopes of attracting more Chinese investment, and has
also distanced itself from a traditional ally, the United States.
On Friday, however, he warned that a war with
China would “result in massacre” and “destroy everything.”
