Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 15) — The Philippines will be firm in its independent foreign policy to avoid tensions between the United States and China, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Wednesday.
“About the competition between the United States and China, and if it’s what we want, believe me, we would rather not have these tensions in our part of the world. That is the last thing that we would like. And we, the Philippines, for our part, has taken an independent policy,” he said during the press conference of the ASEAN-EU Commemorative Summit.
“To put it very simply is that in the Philippines, our foreign policy is the policy for peace and for the national interest,” he also said. “So foreign policy will always be guided by a commitment to peace and the pursuit of the national interest.”
During a brief meeting with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September, Marcos vowed to maintain solid ties with the US after six years of unsteady relations under former President Rodrigo Duterte.
Marcos is set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in January 2023. Marcos earlier said he will talk to the Chinese leader with a “firm voice” but he also echoed Duterte’s statement that Manila cannot afford to go to war against Beijing.
The Philippines and China have been in a maritime dispute as Beijing has been claiming most of the South China Sea, overlapping with the West Philippine Sea.
In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines after it declared that China’s excessive claims have no legal basis.
Beijing, however, has rejected the decision of the international tribunal.
