The Philippines would not allow other nations to advance their own interests at its expense amid the escalating tension between Manila and Beijing, Senator Francis Tolentino said Sunday.
Tolentino, vice-chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, backed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s pronouncement that the Philippines would not be used as a proxy in any engagement between superpowers the United States and China.
Marcos Jr.'s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, forged closer Philippine-China relations, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the present dispensation is seen to have pivoted back the country into America's arms.
Under Mr. Marcos, the Philippines added four more military sites to the five it already shares with the United States under their Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement or EDCA.
Most of the new EDCA sites face the South China Sea, being claimed nearly wholly by China and partly by the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei, among other countries.
"This is not a proxy war because the United States is not our only ally here. We also have alliances with Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe. I also mentioned in recent weeks that India also protested against China," he said.
In the recently concluded 43rd summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Jakarta, Indonesia rejected "misleading narratives that frame the disputes in the South China Sea solely through the lens of strategic competition between two powerful countries" — China and the United States.
According to Tolentino, with the latest development on China's aggression through the unilateral assailment of the 10-dash line, other ASEAN neighbors like Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei may be prompted to become vocal against the belligerent acts shown by the Asian superpower.
Last month, China released a new version of its standard map that deliberately covered the maritime zones of the Philippines, as well as the reefs and islands also claimed by other Southeast Asian countries.
The new Chinese map, which featured a 10-dash line, previously a nine-dash line, included the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin plateau as official Chinese territory.
The move prompted the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam to release strongly worded statements against the new map. India also protested against it.
For Tolentino, the international community's outburst against China's aggression only shows that "there is a need to abide by a treaty called 'United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea' or UNCLOS, as China is a signatory to that treaty."
On 12 July 2016, the Philippines won its arbitral case against China in the Permanent Court of Arbitration — a landmark decision that China continues to reject.
