In his recent Talk to the People television program, President Rodrigo Duterte informed the nation that he will be talking with Chinese President Xi Jinping on April 8.
It was not known if he will travel to Beijing or if they will just talk via telephone or Zoom.
Even the topic of their meeting was not hinted at by the President. But considering recent developments in geopolitics, they could discuss the war between Russia and Ukraine, which concerns China more than the Philippines.
Even closer to home are two issues: the worry of American hawks that China will "invade" Taiwan in the wake of the Russian "invasion" of Ukraine.
But still closer to home is the bigger South China Sea (SCS). Our problems in the smaller West Philippine Sea and our Exclusive Economic Zone are far from over, and farther still from finding a long-lasting solution.
Note that recently, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) reported “a close-distance maneuvering” incident with the Chinese Coast Guard vessel last March 2 during a maritime patrol operation. The CCG's vessel (3305) moved approximately 21 yards towards BRP Malabrigo (MRRV-4402) in the waters of Bajo de Masinloc (Panatag Shoal) during the incident, the PCG said.
BRP Malabrigo's maneuvering space was constrained by the CCG vessel's action in violation of the 1972 International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea.
According to the PCG Commandant CG Admiral Artemio Abu, it was the fourth reported close-distance maneuvering incident involving CCG vessels in Bajo de Masinloc.
What the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) desire is to handle this "through rules-based and peaceful approaches” instead of having a confrontation with the Chinese.
In the meantime, the DFA did the right thing in filing a diplomatic protest with China over this latest incident. Over a hundred protests have been filed by the government during the past several years, according to Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr.
Nothing has come out of these protests because China maintains that it has sovereign rights over the Panatag Shoal, which it calls Huangyan Dao.
China's foreign minister Wang Yi said,
“Huangyan Dao is China’s inherent territory. China has sovereignty over Huangyan Dao and its adjacent waters as well as sovereign rights and jurisdiction over relevant waters.”
With such hard intransigence on both sides, we may well accept that the issue of South China Sea will not be resolved in our lifetime