MANILA/BEIJING, July 22 (Reuters) – The foreign ministers of the Philippines and China met in Manila on Wednesday and both made “strong” protests over an encounter between the two countries’ vessels this week in contested South China Sea waters.
The Philippine foreign affairs secretary, Maria Theresa Lazaro, said in an X post that she reiterated the protest over what she called “unacceptable actions against Filipino personnel”, while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was quoted by an official readout as lodging a protest over “the Philippine personnel’s egregious act of ramming Chinese law-enforcement vessels”.
Bilateral relations have been tense in recent years amid repeated maritime confrontations in the South China Sea, which China claims almost entirely as its own despite a 2016 arbitral ruling that invalidated those claims.
The incident this week took place on Monday in the Second Thomas Shoal. The Philippines said Chinese Coast Guard personnel struck one of the Philippine navy staff on the head with a wooden baton, and China said the Philippine personnel were the first to attack and accused Philippine vessels of ramming a Chinese patrol boat.
In the meeting, Wang told Lazaro that China-Philippines relations stood at a crossroads, and that the Philippines needed to make a “correct and rational” choice regarding its future direction, according to a readout released by China’s foreign ministry.
Wang also accused “certain forces” within the Philippine military and police of deliberate provocations, undermining dialogue and “carrying out the orders of external forces”.
Lazaro said that the two also “discussed the importance of keeping communication lines open, managing tensions, and pursuing practical ways forward”.
(Reporting by Mikhail Flores and Beijing Newsroom; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by David Stanway)
