PH should 'do more' than just file protests vs China —Marcos

The Philippine government has to do more than just file protests against Chinese aggressive actions in the West Philippine Sea, President Ferdinand ''Bongbong'' Marcos Jr. said on Thursday.

Marcos made the statement after the Philippines sent another note verbale to China after a Filipino sailor lost his thumb in an incident in Ayungin Shoal. 

"We have how many? We have over a hundred protests. We have already made a similar number of demarche, so we have to do more than just that," Marcos said in an ambush interview.

"Kasi papatawag natin 'yung ambassador, sasabihin natin ito 'yung position natin, hindi natin gusto 'yung nangyari, and that’s it.,'' he added. 

(We will call the ambassador, we will say this is our position, we don't like what happened, and then that's it.)

"But we have to do more than that, so we are doing just that."

Marcos, however, did not elaborate on the next steps of the Philippines in addressing China's actions in the region. 

The President, meanwhile, was also asked if the government has already summoned Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian over the incident.

''Well, we have called him many times. Well, the DFA (Department of Foreign Affairs) will have to decide to formalize that. A discussion with the ambassador... but we are actually constantly in touch with him," Marcos said. 

"We have made our position very clear, we have made our objections to some of the actions that were undertaken by the maritime forces of the PLA (People's Liberation Army). Also our objection, we have made it very clear not only to the ambassador but also to Beijing," explained Marcos. 

Marcos earlier described the actions of Chinese forces during the Ayungin incident as "deliberate and illegal."

“Although there were no arms involved, nonetheless it was still a deliberate action and it is still essentially an illegal action that was taken by the Chinese forces,” the President said.

Earlier, Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo told a Senate inquiry that the government would work hard to bring China back to the table for talks amid ongoing tensions in the West Philippine Sea.

"We will pursue the peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international laws, specifically the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 2016 Arbitral Award. And we have been working hard to bring back China to the table to talk with us to resolve differences on these issues," Manalo said.

He also said that there is an existing mechanism called the Bilateral Consultation Mechanism (BCM) on South China Sea (SCS).

The National Security Council (NSC) also believes that China also wants to de-escalate tensions in the region despite its growing aggression in the disputed territory.

Beijing 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 refers to 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. —VAL, GMA Integrated News