US-Philippines engagements help with 'agile' responses to China, says Marcos

Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr told US cabinet secretaries Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin on Tuesday that regular engagements between Manila and Washington were needed to ensure "agile" responses to his country's maritime tensions with China.

Ties between Washington and its treaty ally Manila have dramatically improved since Marcos replaced Rodrigo Duterte, who was openly hostile to the US and attempted to bring his country closer to China during his six-year term.

Marcos greeted Secretary of State Blinken and Defence Secretary Austin at the Malacanang Palace on Tuesday morning ahead of meetings with their Filipino counterparts, the first such meetings hosted by the Philippines.

"I'm always very happy that these communication lines are very open so that all the things that we are doing together, in terms of our alliance, in terms of the specific context of our situation here, in the West Philippine Sea and in the Indo-Pacific, are continuously examined and re-examined so we are agile in terms of our responses," Marcos said.

The Philippines has competing claims with China in the waters to its west also known as the South China Sea. China claims 90% of the sea as its sovereign territory.

Tensions in the disputed waterway have boiled over into violence in the past year, with a Filipino sailor losing a finger in a June 17 clash that Manila described as "intentional-high speed ramming" by the Chinese coast guard. 

Manila turned down US offers of assistance for its operations at sea. It reached a "provisional arrangement" with China this month to ease tensions and manage differences, but the two sides appear at odds over the details of the deal, which has not been made public. 

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Blinken and Austin discussed with Marcos "their shared commitment to upholding international law in the South China Sea."

"The two secretaries underscored the United States' ironclad commitments to the Philippines under our Mutual Defence Treaty," Miller said in a statement following the meeting.

COUNTERING CHINA

The meetings in Manila follow talks between Blinken and Austin and their counterparts in Japan, another key US ally in East Asia, where they announced an upgrade of the US military command in Japan and labelled China the "greatest strategic challenge" facing the region.

Blinken also met on Monday with foreign ministers from Australia, India and Japan, a grouping known as the Quad, and decried China's actions in the South China Sea. 

The US top diplomat met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Laos on Saturday and criticised Beijing for actions regarding Taiwan and the Philippines.

China's foreign ministry hit back at Washington and Tokyo, for attacking what it called China's "normal military development and national defence policy" and accused the Quad of "artificially creating tension, inciting confrontation and containing the development of other countries".

The Pentagon has said US officials will announce $500 million in foreign military financing for the Philippines during the visit, part of $2 billion in aid for Indo-Pacific countries the US Congress sees as "confronting Chinese aggression".

The Pentagon has also proposed spending $128 million on infrastructure improvements at Philippine bases accessible to US forces under the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). There are now nine sites under EDCA, after Manila agreed last year to add four new sites, including three in the north that are seen as important in the event of China invading Taiwan, and one facing the South China Sea.

The two countries have also been negotiating an intelligence sharing deal known as a General Security of Military Information Agreement, which they had aimed to reach by the end of 2023 but have not yet concluded.