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30-09-2024
BEIJING: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the US deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the Philippines “undermines regional peace and stability”, the foreign ministry said on Sunday.
Speaking to South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul in New York, Wang also called for avoiding “war or chaos on the Korean Peninsula”, the ministry said in a post on its website.
The US deployed the Typhon system, which can be equipped with cruise missiles capable of striking Chinese targets, this year. China has demanded its removal, and Russia has joined in condemning the first deployment of the system to the Indo-Pacific, accusing Washington of fueling an arms race.
Wang said the deployment “is not in the interests of regional countries”.
The Philippines, southern neighbor to Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory, is an important part of US strategy in Asia and would be an indispensable staging point for the military to aid Taipei in the event of a Chinese attack.
Wang said exchanges and cooperation between China and South Korea have become more active this year.
America has rushed to mend relations with its former colony after ties frayed under former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. It has lavished attention on new leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr and sent military equipment and vaccines. Washington needs Manila in its camp as tensions with China rise in the Indo-Pacific.
Shortly after winning the presidency of the Philippines in May of last year, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr took his first congratulatory call from a foreign head of state.
Biden’s speed in wishing the new president well delighted Marcos, according to brother-in-law Gregorio Maria Araneta III, who said the Philippine leader proudly told his family about that call a few days later over lunch. It “put a smile on his face,” Araneta, one of the country’s most prominent tycoons, told Reuters in a rare interview, speaking from his wood-paneled office in Manila.
The U.S embassy in Manila confirmed Biden was the first to call. What followed was two trips to the United States in less than a year for Marcos, and visits to the Philippines by high-ranking Biden administration officials. Among them: Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Manila-based political analyst Julio Amador III described the US outreach as “unprecedented love-bombing” aimed at resetting the US-Philippines relationship. Marcos’ predecessor, the populist firebrand Rodrigo Duterte, was openly hostile to the United States and attempted to bring his country closer to communist China during his six-year term.
There is urgency to the US charm offensive: America needs Manila squarely in its camp as tensions with China rise in the Asia-Pacific.
The Philippines, Taiwan’s neighbor to the south, would be an indispensable staging point for the US military to aid Taipei in the event of a Chinese attack, military analysts say. China’s ruling Communist Party views democratically governed Taiwan as an inalienable part of China and refuses to rule out force to bring the island under its control. Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has laid claim to an ever-widening swathe of the South China Sea and is bent on making his nation the unquestioned military power in East Asia. Such a shift would have far-reaching consequences for US influence, regional security and global trade. More than a fifth of the world’s shipping passes through the South China Sea annually. The narrow straits around the Philippines and Taiwan bristle with undersea internet cables and are vital channels for US naval forces patrolling the region. (Int’l News Desk)
