Current location:Global Glance news portal > health
With new trilateral partnership, Philippines eyes more foreign investment — Radio Free Asia
Global Glance news portal2024-05-08 23:51:47【health】4People have gathered around
IntroductionThe Philippines stands to reap an economic windfall through a new security partnership with the U.S.
The Philippines stands to reap an economic windfall through a new security partnership with the U.S. and Japan that their leaders unveiled at a Washington summit Thursday, in seeking to dull the edge of China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific.
U.S. President Joe Biden hosted Philippine and Japanese leaders Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Fumio Kishida at the White House in what was billed as an inaugural tripartite summit. It came on the heels of surging Chinese assertiveness in the disputed South China Sea.
As part of a joint statement outlining their collective vision for regional security, the three leaders announced plans for collaborating on economic projects in the Philippines, including developing an infrastructure and high-tech connectivity corridor on the main island of Luzon.
The three allies were careful to describe their new partnership as a defense cooperation pact in nature.
“We meet today as friends and partners, bound by a shared vision and pursuit of a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” President Marcos said.
“It is a partnership, borne not out of convenience nor of expediency, but as a natural progression of a deepening relations and robust cooperation amongst our three nations, linked by a profound respect for democracy, good governance, and the rule of law.”
Marcos, the namesake son of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, has steered his country back to close relations with the United States, its traditional ally, after those ties had cooled under his predecessor, who drew the Philippines closer to China.
Marcos said the summit was the culmination of cooperation by the three nations that had started even before the historic one-day meeting took place.
Security officials of the three nations already had been meeting to lay the foundation for “trilateral maritime exercises,” and the expansion of annual large-scale maritime exercises between the U.S. and the Philippines, he said.
The trilateral meeting, Marcos said, would likely evolve in the future, as the three partners all face increasingly complex challenges that require “an unwavering commitment to the rules-based international order.”
That was an indirect reference to China. The three allies have often accused Beijing of ignoring international rules as it moves to expand its reach in the region.
More directly, the joint statement expressed the three nations’ steadfast opposition to “the dangerous and coercive use” by China of its coast guard and maritime militia ships in the South China Sea “as well as efforts to disrupt other countries’ offshore resource exploration.”
“We reiterate serious concern over [China’s] repeated obstruction of Philippine vessels’ exercise of high seas freedom of navigation and the disruption of supply lines to Second Thomas Shoal,” it said, referring to a reef also known as Ayungin Shoal, which lies in South China Sea waters within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
Japan, for its part, is locked in a territorial dispute with China in the East China Sea.
In their statement, the leaders reiterated their “strong opposition to any attempts by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] to unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion in the East China Sea.”
This includes “actions that seek to undermine Japan’s longstanding and peaceful administration of the Senkaku Islands.”
On Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province, the leaders meanwhile affirmed the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
“This is a meeting that looks ahead. As we deepen our ties and enhance our coordination, we seek to identify ways of growing our economies and making them more resilient, climate-proofing our cities and our societies, sustaining our development progress, and forging a peaceful world for the next generation,” Marcos said.
Marcos’ father was a staunch ally of the United States, which during the Cold War operated huge naval and air bases in areas where the hi-tech Luzon corridor is to be installed.
Last year, Marcos Jr.’s administration agreed to a controversial deal with Washington to grant the U.S. military greater access on a rotational basis to bases in the northern Philippines.
The agreement has angered anti-war activists in the Philippines, who warn it could provoke Beijing and that their country could be caught in the middle of fighting should a conflict break out between the U.S. and China over Taiwan. On Thursday, protesters gathered near the White House as well as outside the U.S. Embassy in Manila to denounce the bilateral pact.
‘In lockstep’
On Thursday, Biden reiterated that his administration’s support for Manila was “ironclad” and that the two countries were bound by a mutual treaty to defend each other in times of foreign aggression. This decades-old pact was updated recently to cover civilian vessels, as well as ships from the Philippine Coast Guard.
“Any attack on Philippine aircraft, vessels or armed forces in the South China Sea would invoke our Mutual Defense Treaty,” Biden said in remarks at the White House.
On Friday, the national security advisers of the Philippines and the United States, together with their respective defense chiefs and top diplomats, took part in an unprecedented “3+3” meeting in Washington.
“Our alliance is stronger than ever,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said before the meeting at the State Department. At the Pentagon, “we’re working in lockstep with our colleagues at the [Philippine] Department of National Defense to strengthen interoperability between our forces, to expand our operational coordination, and to stand up to coercion in the South China Sea.”
Last year, the two allies launched joint sea and air patrols in the contested waterway.
Meanwhile in Beijing, China’s foreign ministry criticized the summit in Washington as “bloc politics.”
“We firmly oppose any acts that stoke and drive up tensions and harm other countries’ strategic security and interests,” ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said during a regularly scheduled news conference on Friday.
“We are seriously against forming exclusive groupings in this region. Japan and the Philippines have every right to develop normal relations with other countries, but they should not introduce bloc confrontation into this region,” she said.
Economic projects
During their meeting on Thursday, Marcos, Biden and Kishida also launched the “Luzon Corridor” – where they pledged to accelerate coordinated investments in high-impact projects including Subic Bay and Clark north of Manila.
Those were the sites of two of America’s largest overseas bases until a nationalist Philippine senate voted to end their lease in the early 1990s.
The corridor, they said, symbolized their “enhanced economic cooperation.”
“Japan, the Philippines and the United States are also partnering to expand cooperation and investments in other areas of the Philippines,” they said.
The U.S. State Department said that the Luzon Corridor was expected to have an “outsized impact” on critical industries, including semiconductors. As part of the plan, the U.S. government would seek to partner with multilateral development institutions as well as the private sector to deploy capital and spur economic activity across the corridor.
‘Windfall’
Defense analyst Chester Cabalza, the founding president of International Development and Security Cooperation, a Philippines think-tank, said both Washington and Tokyo were rewarding Manila for its principled stand on the South China Sea.
Cabalza said it couldn’t get any clearer than that, and the “windfall of economic pledges” was clearly a reward of sorts.
“These grew from the bravery of fighting for free and open trade in the Indo-Pacific and by supporting American and Japanese deterrence against a Chinese agenda of dominance in the contested waters,” Cabalza told BenarNews on Friday, noting that both industrialized nations had to “prepare against China’s increasing military might” including by way of forging alliances.
“This is an experimental forging of allegiance for a plausible shooting war in the region,” he said.
The analyst noted that the three-nation partnership could boost business confidence, and added that any country could counter China without fear of losing out from Beijing’s much-touted economic prowess.
The triumvirate has a combined gross domestic product output that “is far greater than China to counter China’s affluence and influence in Southeast Asia,” Cabalza said.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
Address of this article:http://angola.arnoldview.org/news-78a199877.html
Very good!(3)
Related articles
- Son on target as South Korea beat Thailand 3
- Mexico's likely next president would be its first leader with a Jewish background
- I'm an American and I tried a Tesco meal deal for the first time
- No rest for Rodgers! Controversial New York Jets quarterback continues Achilles recovery with early
- China to expedite building modern eco
- The US is expected to block aid to an Israeli military unit. What is Leahy law that it would cite?
- CPC issues revised regulations on disciplinary inspections
- Norway’s King Harald, Europe’s oldest monarch, is back at work after pacemaker implants
- Kylie Jenner and longtime pal Rosalia arrive back at the Mark Hotel in NYC hand
- Nearly 100 Belarus political prisoners have severe medical problems, rights group says
Popular articles
Recommended
Rep. Greene and Speaker Johnson meet for a second day as possible vote on his ouster simmers
Michael Jordan celebrates NASCAR Talladega win with driver Tyler Reddick's son
Slade Cecconi, Diamondbacks earn 5
Cruz Beckham's VERY sweet tribute to mum Victoria at her star
Mother of Australian surfers killed in Mexico gives moving tribute to sons
UK prime minister pushes for Rwanda deportation bill over objections from unelected upper chamber
Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal solar power grants
Express files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, announces store closures, possible sale
Links
- Person dies after crash in Waipā, Waikato
- Heavy rain warning for Westland likely to move to red
- Ferrari F512M stolen in 1995 is recovered by Met Police
- Sydney police officer praised for stopping alleged shopping mall attacker
- Hamas says it will continue negotiating for ceasefire as Ramadan nears
- Olympic champions to earn US$50,000, end of 128
- 'Enough is enough': Making streets safe for young women
- Person dies after crash in Waipā, Waikato
- Sinkhole opens up on busy Auckland road as water main bursts
- Man charged with murder of Ōpōtiki Mongrel Mob Barbarians president Steven Taiatini