Philippine President Benigno Aquino III yesterday denied reports he had asked the US for spy planes to monitor a territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea.
Aquino told reporters that his country had its own ships and aircraft to keep an eye on the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) and that he had merely mentioned in an interview that US aircraft could be called upon for help if needed.
“If you will go through the transcript of the interview, I said: ‘We might’ [ask for US help],” he said.
Photo: EPA
“That is where [the interviewers] suddenly introduced the supposed request for overflights, which wasn’t what I stated,” he said.
Aides said Aquino had made the remarks during an interview with a foreign news agency on Monday.
Subsequent reports of the president’s alleged requests for US spy planes raised concerns within China, with the country warning the Philippines against provocation over the three-month standoff between the two countries.
“Let us correct that. America is a treaty ally. Where we are lacking in capacity, I think we can go to them and ask that they increase [our] situational awareness,” Aquino said yesterday.
The shoal stand-off began in April when Chinese vessels prevented the Philippine navy from arresting Chinese fishermen encroaching on what the Filipinos claim is a part of their country’s territory.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, even waters close to the coasts of its neighbors.
In addition to the whole of the Scarborough Shoal, the Philippines also claims parts of the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙島). It says the shoal is well within its 200 nautical mile (370km) exclusive economic zone.
Taiwan also claims part of the Spratlys.
Aquino yesterday said that the Philippines had withdrawn its own ships from the shoal almost three weeks ago, but Chinese ships were still in the area.
“If their vessels had also gone home ... there would be no more issue. So who is prolonging the issue?” he said.
“There are a lot of things being said by the other side. Maybe they need to balance their statements with the truth,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Philippines announced yesterday that it had filed a diplomatic protest with China over Beijing’s establishment of a new prefecture called “Sansha” to administer disputed territories in the South China Sea.
Philippine Foreign Ministry spokesman Raul Hernandez said Sansha’s establishment violated Manila’s claim to the Scarborough Shoal and parts of the Spratlys, and the continental shelf and waters off the country’s western coast.
He told reporters the ministry was awaiting the Chinese government’s response to the protest.
Vietnam has also protested China’s action because of its claims to several islands and islets..
China’s Cabinet approved the establishment of Sansha last month to administer three major island groups in the South China Sea and the surrounding waters, with the government seat to be based in the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan also lays claim to.
Hernandez said Beijing’s decision contradicted a non-aggression accord signed by China and ASEAN in 2002 to prevent the territorial disputes from turning violent.
Additional reporting by AP
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B