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 […]

The folly in President Duterte’s challenge to debate Antonio Carpio was that people expected him to back out. Upon announcement of his retreat, friends and foes groaned in texts: “Hay, sabi ko na nga ba!” The Cabinet’s assignment of his spox Harry Roque in his stead only magnified the shame. Memes instantly mocked, “Sa Japan […]

MANILA – The mixed messages sent between President Rodrigo Duterte’s conciliatory tone towards China and the barrage of protests from his own foreign and defence ministries over apparent incursions into Philippine-claimed waters have led to a cognitive dissonance in Manila’s disputes with Beijing over the South China Sea. On Wednesday (May 5), he dismissed a […]

  MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines on Wednesday said its maritime patrols had twice driven Chinese vessels away from a shoal within the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). It was the first time since President Duterte took office in 2016 that the government disclosed such a move by Philippine ships against Chinese vessels. The action […]