Cristina Chi - Philstar.com
October 22, 2026 | 4:08pm
MANILA, Philippines — Facing a travel ban to China is a “small price to pay” in exchange for standing up for Filipino fishers in the West Philippine Sea, a lawmaker said Tuesday, October 20, after the Chinese Embassy in Manila put him and others on a “list” of lawmakers implied as unwelcome in China.
Rep. Karl Legazpi (Pinoy Workers) issued the statement hours after the embassy reposted a joint statement by nine lawmakers urging the president to consider expelling Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan. The embassy had shared the lawmakers’ statement with the caption: “Put on record. You are now on the list.”
“If speaking up means foregoing the opportunity to visit a country I have always wanted to see, that is a small price to pay,” Legazpi said. “Some things are worth more than the privilege of being welcome.”
The embassy has not said what the list means and if it had any plans of formally barring the nine lawmakers from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, as was done with former Sen. Francis Tolentino, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., and more than a dozen Palawan municipal officials.
The sanction on Tolentino in July 2025 was the first time Beijing took state action against a specific critic in Manila, and in June this year China barred Teodoro, his spouse and his child from entering its territory and prohibited Chinese organisations and individuals from dealing with them.
Earlier in February, it banned 16 local government officials from the municipality of Kalayaan, Palawan, from entering mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macao. This was in retaliation for the persona-non-grata tag that the municipality — the country’s most remote and least populated town, located in the West Philippine Sea — had declared for China's ambassadors in 2023 and 2026.
An escalatory exchange of words between the embassy and officials followed after Jing, in a chance interview on October 15, told reporters: "If we want to use force, we may easily win."
The ambassador did not explicitly say that the use of force would be against Manila but the ambassador had delivered this response in reaction to Teodoro's remarks that China was a "troublemaker."
The Department of Foreign Affairs called Jing's remark a “thinly veiled threat," and Marcos said the next day that it “sounds very much to me like a threat."
The embassy did not retract the comment and accused the Philippine side of taking the ambassador's words out of context and overinterpreting them. It has since dared the Senate and the House to declare Jing persona non grata and “stop bluffing.”
On October 18, the embassy said those seeking his expulsion would not be welcome in China.
‘Somebody has to stand up’
“If I don’t speak up for my fellow Palaweños, who will?” Legazpi said in his statement Tuesday. “Rhetoric aside, benign or otherwise, the fact remains that our fishermen continue to be harassed and bullied by PRC vessels in waters where we have every legal right to fish, including our historical and traditional fishing grounds.”
“Kung may kapalit man ang paninindigang ito, so be it (If this stand comes at a cost, so be it),” Legazpi said, adding that he had “nothing against the Chinese people and their rich history and culture, which I have long admired.”
On Wednesday, October 21, ten House members filed House Resolution No. 1562 urging Marcos to either declare Jing persona non grata or ask Beijing to recall him.
Besides Legazpi, the authors are Reps. Ziaur-Rahman Alonto Adiong (Lanao del Sur), Adrian Michael Amatong (Zamboanga del Norte), Kaka Bag-ao (Dinagat Islands), Percival Cendaña (Akbayan), Chel Diokno (Akbayan) and Dadah Kiram Ismula (Akbayan), Leila de Lima (Mamamayang Liberal), Cielo Krisel Lagman (Albay) and Mark Anthony Santos (Las Piñas).
De Lima said that if the list referred to those who would not bend to Beijing’s narrative, she would be “honored and proud to be on the list."
Akbayan, whose three representatives were on the list, said it considered the designation an honor.
However, not all members of the House of Representatives have backed calls to expel Jing. The Makabayan bloc, through Reps. Antonio Tinio, Sarah Elago and Renee Co, urged all parties to de-escalate immediately and return to diplomacy, while continuing to assert the country’s sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea.
Rep. Edgar Erice (Caloocan City, 2nd District) urged Marcos to take personal charge of the dispute.
“Statements of bravado may sound good before television cameras and earn public applause, but foreign policy is not a shouting match,” Erice said.
He warned that a confrontation with China “without a clear strategic path could be disastrous for our already struggling economy."