Philippine Senator Imee Marcos has expressed hope that Manila can resolve the South China Sea dispute through diplomacy by emulating the recent China-India border agreement, but analysts argue her country’s limited leverage against Beijing’s military might makes a similar deal unlikely.
Senator Marcos, sister of President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr and head of the Senate panel on foreign relations, said the accord reached last week between China and India showed that dialogue works.
“If India and China can agree on peace after decades of lethal encounters, then the Philippines and China can certainly work together to de-escalate tensions in the West Philippine Sea,” she told the Inquirer newspaper on Friday.
The West Philippine Sea is Manila’s term for the parts of the South China Sea that are included in the country’s exclusive economic zone.
China and India announced an agreement on October 21 to resume patrols and ease military restrictions along their contested Himalayan border, marking a potential thaw after the deadly Galwan Valley clashes in 2020, where at least 20 Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number of Chinese troops died.
The two nuclear-armed neighbours have a long-standing territorial dispute along the 3,440km Line of Actual Control, with a history of stand-offs and a border war in 1962.