China: Marcos' Shangri-La remarks on WPS sovereignty disregard 'history,' 'facts'

China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s speech on Philippine sovereignty over the West Philippine Sea (WPS) during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore allegedly disregarded “history” and “facts.”

In a statement, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said: ”Those remarks disregard history and facts and are designed to amplify the Philippines’ wrongful position on the issues concerning the South China Sea and deliberately distort and hype up the maritime situation.”

Marcos in his Shangri-La Dialogue speech on Friday affirmed his administration’s commitment to protect the country’s territorial rights amid the maritime dispute with China.

He emphasized the importance of the Philippines’ territorial claims in the West Philippine Sea: “We will never allow  anyone to detach it from the totality of the maritime domain that  renders our nation whole.”

“As President, I have sworn to this solemn commitment from the very first day that I took office. I do not intend to yield. Filipinos do not yield,” the chief executive added.

Marcos also pointed out that the country’s territorial claims were “derived not from imagination, but from international law,” citing the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the 2016 arbitral ruling.

In response, China reiterated the following points:

• China has indisputable sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao, and sovereign rights and jurisdiction over relevant waters.
• the territory of the Philippines does not include China’s Nanhai Zhudao.
• the so-called arbitral award on the South China Sea is illegal, null and void
• the responsibility for the recent escalation concerning the South China Sea issue between China and the Philippines lies fully with the Philippine side
• the situation in the South China Sea is generally stable with the joint efforts of China and ASEAN countries
• China will continue to firmly defend its territorial sovereignty and maritime interests and rights.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, a conduit for more than $3 trillion in annual ship commerce. Its territorial claims overlap with those of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei.

Manila calls parts of the waters within its exclusive economic zone as the West Philippine Sea.

In 2016, an international arbitration tribunal in the Hague ruled that China's claims over the South China Sea had no legal basis, a decision Beijing does not recognize. — Joviland Rita/RSJ, GMA Integrated News