China has issued a demand to United States ally the Philippines amid the neighbors' stalemate over a military outpost in the contested South China Sea.
"The Philippines went back on its word and refuses to tow away the warship illegally grounded at Ren'ai Jiao," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at Thursday's press conference when asked about a recent remark by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Ren'ai Jiao is Beijing's term for the Second Thomas Shoal, which Manila refers to as Ayungin Shoal.
Manila ran aground the warship in question, the 80-year-old former tank landing ship the BRP Sierra Madre, in 1999 to stake its claim on the atoll. China routinely dispatches coast guard and paramilitary ships to confront convoys delivering supplies to the contingent of Philippine marines stationed on the ship.
These blockades have escalated tensions. Video shows Chinese forces performing up-close maneuvers and deploying water cannons against convoys, which Beijing accuses of delivering construction materials to repair the rusting warship.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Marcos said he was "horrified" at the idea of an agreement that would allow continued Chinese activities within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which Beijing claims sovereignty over as it does most of the South China Sea.
Mao said Thursday: "If the Philippines truly wants to ease tensions...through dialogue and communication, it needs to honor the commitments and understandings and stop provocations."
She said China's first demand is that the Philippines "tow away the warship at once" and restore the reef to its original, uninhabited state.
Pending the towing, Beijing will permit Manila to send "living necessities, out of humanitarianism" to the Sierra Madre, but only if the Philippine side gives advance notice of the supply trips and "after on-site verification is conducted" by China, she added.
The spokesperson warned: "If the Philippines sends large amounts of construction materials to the warship and attempts to build fixed facilities and a permanent outpost, China will not accept it and will resolutely stop it in accordance with law and regulations."
A former spokesperson for Rodrigo Duterte, the Southeast Asian country's president from 2016-2022, made headlines last week after seeming to claim Duterte had made a "gentlemen's agreement" not to reinforce Second Thomas Shoal in exchange for China maintaining the status quo in the area.
A former advisor to Duterte later said the ex-president had denied making such an agreement. Roque then clarified China's side of the agreement was meant to apply to the entire Philippine EEZ, not just Second Thomas Shoal.
President Marcos denied any knowledge of such an arrangement.
"We don't know anything about it. There is no documentation; there is no record... and we were not briefed when I came into office," he told reporters Wednesday.
"I am horrified by the idea that we have compromised, through a secret agreement, the territory, the sovereignty, and the sovereign rights of the Philippines," he added.
The president said the issue still had to be cleared up and that he would seek to do so with the Chinese ambassador to Manila, Huang Xilian.
The Philippine Defense Department did not immediately respond to Newsweek's request for comment.
Marcos and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida joined U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday for the first-ever summit between leaders of their respective countries.
In the joint statement that emerged from the meeting, the leaders condemned China's militarization of its artificial islands in the South China Sea," its "dangerous and coercive use of coast guard and maritime militia vessels," and its "efforts to disrupt other countries' offshore resource exploitation."
In Biden's one-on-one talks with Marcos ahead of the trilateral meeting, Biden reaffirmed Washington's Mutual Defense Treaty with Manila, which he said applies anywhere in the Pacific.
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About the writer
Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian ... Read more
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