Manila: China and the Philippines must pursue informal bilateral talks despite 18 years of failed formal bilateral negotiations from 1995 to 2013, senators and geopolitical scholars said on Wednesday.
Experts believe that by taking this step, the Philippines would not be caught in the middle of the China and United States conflict — signs of which began last week when China warded off US reconnaissance flights that recorded China’s reclamation projects on the South China Sea.
“Influential Filipino-Chinese businessmen with business interests in China should be tapped to launch the informal bilateral talks between China and the Philippines. We have to try everything to resolve the issue,” said Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos.
The US entry in South China Sea’s overlapping conflict has made the issue “more complex,” said Marcos, adding, “Should a conflict erupt between China and the US, we will be caught in the middle.”
The Philippines “must be careful” in handling the current geopolitical problem, warned Senator Francis Escudero, although he believed the two top world economies would not collide but side with each other for the sake of economic development.
China controls papers of the US’s $2 trillion (Dh7.3 trillion) debts, argued Escudero, adding, “In the end, the two countries [China and US] would reconcile and we end up still fighting with China (over the issue of overlapping claims in the South China Sea).”
But foreign affairs officials said the Philippine could no longer engage in formal bilateral talks with China after it filed a complaint about China’s takeover of shoals on Philippines’ exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in the South China Sea, before The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration on March 30, 2014.
In August 1995, the two countries held their first formal bilateral consultations on the South China Sea after the Philippine Navy discovered China’s structures on the Mischief Reef (known as Panganiban Reef in the Philippines and Meiji Reef in China), which is located 250 kilometres west of Palawan, southwestern Philippines, within the Philippines’ EEZ in the South China Sea, former Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said in 2013.
The two countries also held 50 bilateral consultations following a standoff between Chinese and Philippine vessels over the failed apprehension of eight vessels of Chinese fishermen off Scarborough Shoal (or Bajo de Masinloc and Panatag Shoal in the Philippines and Huangyan Dao in China) on April 8. 2012, said Hernandez then, adding that Scarborough is 198 kilometres west of Zambales, central Luzon, within Philippines’ EEZ in the South China Sea.
Formal bilateral talks between China and Philippines ended in 2013 after the Philippines decided to elevate its case versus China before the United Nations arbitration court, said Hernandez.
China, Taiwan, and Vietnam claim the whole of the South China Sea in some parts of the Spratly Archipelago based on their respective historical rights over the sea lane. Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines claim EEZs in the South China Sea and some parts of the Spratly Archipelago, based on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea’s (UNCLOS) provision of 200 nautical miles EEZ starting from countries’ shore.
