PBBM: PHL needs ‘paradigm shift’ in dealing with China on West PHL Sea issue

(Eagle News)–President Bongbong Marcos has said the Philippines needs a “paradigm shift” in dealing with China on the West Philippine Sea issue, noting that “traditional methods of diplomacy” bore “very little progress.”

So far, the Philippines has taken steps such as filing a diplomatic protest with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, summoning Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian and making a “demarche to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials” to call out the China Coast Guard (CCG) to deal with Chinese actions in the West Philippine Sea.

The Chinese naval assets water-cannoned the vessels of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) during its resupply mission to BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal last week.

Prior to this, a Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources that was headed to Scarborough Shoal to distribute supplies to local fishing communities had the same experience.

“We have to do something what we have not done before. We have to come up with a new concept, a new principle, a new idea so that we move, as I say, we move the needle the other way. It’s going up, let’s move the needle back, so that paradigm shift is something that we have to formulate,” the President told Japanese media over the weekend.

Asked what that paradigm shift was, the President said there are many ideas but “we have to bring all of those ideas together..”

He said the Philippines will continue talking to its partners in the Indo-Pacific region and to “the rest of the world.”

“We have, as I have said, the consensus that we must continue to promote peace, but we have to decide amongst ourselves what part each of us plays and what we can play, what we are willing to play,” he added.

“So, and put that – put all of those elements together so that we have a, so that we have a good plan that will take us as I’ve said, down, not the road to conflict, but down the road to peace,” he said.