MANILA: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. may summon China’s ambassador, who appeared to suggest Beijing could easily win a conflict with the Philippines if it used force.
“It sounds very much to me like a threat and it’s not a very diplomatic statement to be made,” Marcos told reporters Friday. “We perhaps would like to understand what exactly it is that he means.”
Asked whether he would call in the envoy, “I think that deserves a discussion between the ambassador and myself,” Marcos said.
Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan said after a speech in Quezon City on Thursday that if his country wanted to use force, “we may easily win.” He added in comments to reporters: “But no, we will not use force. We love peace.”
China and the Philippines have seen ties deteriorate sharply amid their South China Sea dispute, which has fueled repeated confrontations in a waterway vital to global trade. Nuclear-armed China has one of the world’s largest armed forces, with defense spending more than 50 times that of the Philippines, according to data from the military research institute known as SIPRI.
The Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs rebuked Jing, saying in a statement that his comments were “regrettable.” It added that the envoy “had a poor choice of words that would seem to convey a thinly veiled threat of the use of force, which is hardly helpful in the context of the complicated bilateral ties between the Philippines and China.”
In a social media post on Friday, China’s embassy in Manila criticized the department for its “selective quotation and overinterpretation.”
Bilateral relations “are currently at an extremely sensitive stage,” the embassy’s statement said. “We urge the DFA to play a more responsible role in preventing such actions, thereby ensuring that China-Philippines relations are not pushed into a dangerous and uncertain situation.”