MOVING AWAY FROM U.S.
Leader aligns with China, suggests he’ll approach Russia, too
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, left, meets with Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China, on Thursday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Mr. Duterte and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping pledged to enhance trust and deepen cooperation, Chinese officials said, as Manila’s new leader seeks to rebalance his country’s diplomacy away from the United States.
BEIJING — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced that his country is separating from the U.S. in a speech before a Beijing economic forum Thursday, after handing China a major diplomatic victory, agreeing to resume dialogue on their South China Sea territorial dispute following months of acrimony.
The rapprochement between the two Asian nations could widen a political rift between the United States and the Philippines, whose recently elected leader has made no secret of its antipathy for America and ordered an end to joint maneuvers between their militaries.
“Your honors, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States ... both in military and economics also,” Mr. Duterte said in remarks met with applause.
The president suggested that the separation would extend to the “military, not maybe social, but economics also. America has lost.”
He continued, “I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow, and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin” and tell him “there’s three of us against the world.”
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Mr. Duterte’s remarks were “inexplicably at odds with the very close relationship we have with the Filipino people as well as the government there on many different levels, not just from a security perspective.”
Although Mr. Duterte, who took office in June, is popular at home, the people there hold more positive attitudes toward the U.S., the former colonial power, than the president does.
A poll by the Pew Research Center in 2015, about global attitudes toward the United States, showed that 92 percent of Philippine residents held a favorable view of the United States, the country with the highest showing in Asia.
Mr. Duterte is expected to address Chinese business leaders today and may visit a drug rehabilitation center in Beijing to demonstrate his support for China’s tough policy on drug offenders. Unlike officials in the United States and other Western countries, China has refrained from criticizing Mr. Duterte’s deadly campaign against drugs, in which about 1,400 people have been killed by the police and hundreds more by vigilantes.
Following talks in Beijing between Mr. Duterte and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, a senior Chinese diplomat announced the sides had agreed to restore the full range of contacts, although he said the leaders touched only briefly on the South China Sea.