Members of the Philippine Coast Guard participate during a training on navigation, small boat operations, maintenance, and logistical operations in the West Philippine Sea in Palawan on April 24, 2021. Philippine Coast Guard, Handout MANILA – The Philippines should seek alliance with the world’s powerful militaries amid its maritime dispute with China, a senator said […]

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte barred his cabinet from talking about the South China Sea in public on Monday after weeks of strong rebukes by his ministers against China’s conduct in the contested waters. Tensions between the Philippines and its giant neighbour have escalated since March, with Manila filing daily diplomatic protests over the presence of […]

There is a tiny sandbar called Sandy Cay about two nautical miles from Pag-asa Island, which at about 37 hectares is the largest Philippine-occupied island in the Spratlys. Before 2017, Sandy Cay was a disappearing sandbar. Half of the year Sandy Cay would be above water at high tide when the action of the waves […]

Are U.S. allies finally rallying around Washington’s more aggressive stance toward Beijing? By Michael Auslin, the author of Asia’s New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific and is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. People watch from the shore as the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier leaves Portsmouth Naval Base in southeastern England on […]

MANILA – A Filipino fisherman in Infanta, Pangasinan said Wednesday he took offense at President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent clarification that his 2016 campaign statement of riding a jet ski and challenging Chinese incursions in the West Philippine Sea was just a joke. “Kaming mga mangingisda dito, masama ang loob namin. Ba’t gano’n lang, joke joke […]

‘There is only one voice on what’s ours: mine. Period…. I speak for the President on this subject,’ says Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr after Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque’s wrong claim regarding Julian Felipe Reef Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr reiterated that only the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) should speak on the country’s foreign […]

“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted,” Arthur Miller once observed. In the same vein, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), a once promising regional organisation, is confronting its own moment of truth. The raging civil war in Myanmar, and the festering disputes in the South China Sea, […]

MANILA (BLOOMBERG) – China has added more ships in a disputed area of the South China Sea even after the Philippines’ repeated protests, according to President Rodrigo Duterte’s top diplomat, who has pledged to take up the issue with his Chinese counterpart. The South-east Asian nation is considering another protest after Chinese vessels in the […]

Foreign Secretary Teddy Locsin Jnr says there are now 300 Chinese boats in the disputed waters, up from 200 in March His remarks came as the armed forces chief said the Philippines was on track to build facilities on Thitu island to boost the efforts of the maritime forces The Philippines’ Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin […]

President Duterte disavowed Monday that he harangued China during his 2016 presidential campaign. “I did not promise that I would pressure China,” he claimed. “I never mentioned about China and the Philippines in my campaign because that was a very serious matter. I never, never in my campaign as president promised the people that I […]