PHL banks on ‘good faith’ amid China’s big dredger deployment
PRESIDENT Rodrigo R. Duterte is relying on the “principle of good faith in international relations” amid China’s recent deployment and testing of what could be Asia’s largest dredger in the contested South China Sea, his new spokesman said yesterday.
“Well, the President recognizes the principle of good faith in international relations. China has told the President, they do not intend to reclaim Scarborough and we leave it at that,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry L. Roque, Jr., said in a press briefing in Malacañang.
“We need to rely on good faith because otherwise there would be no predictability in international relations,” he added.
On Monday, Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana expressed concerns on the launch of the dredger.
“The mere presence is a little bit concerning,” Mr. Lorenzana told reporters. “Where it is going, we do not know.”
Military officials said the dredging vessel, named Tian Kun, has a deck the size of nine basketball courts.
China has poured billions of dollars into building artificial islands to strengthen its sovereignty claims across most of the South China Sea, through which more than $3 trillion of seaborne trade passes each year.
Apart from the Philippines, other countries that have claims in the waters are Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Mr. Duterte said in end- October that he trusts China to keep its promise not to build structures in the Scarborough Shoal, which the Philippines claims and has been confirmed by an international tribunal’s ruling.
“China has put it on record, that near the Pag-asa, where we also have our bay there, the Scarborough Islands, China has committed to us not to build anything there and I hope that they would honor that commitment to us,” the President said.
Mr. Roque, meanwhile, said, “We’re not just trusting. We have a decision (from an international court)… And that decision remains unchanged.”
Mr. Lorenzana, meanwhile, said troops deployed on nine Philippine-claimed features in the South China Sea had been ordered to monitor the movements of Chinese navy, coast guard, fishing boats, and now the dredger, in the Spratly islands
“We are constantly monitoring the movement of the ship,” he said. “We have also our air patrol going regularly, so we will be able to monitor movement of this so-called very big dredger ship.”
The testing of the dredger comes ahead of two major international meetings in Vietnam and the Philippines this week and the next, set to be attended by China, as well as the US. —