BANGKOK, November 18 ------ President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time in a bilateral meeting held on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (2022) events here.
While regional issues were tackled in the meeting, discussions were mostly about Marcos’ upcoming state visit to China in January 2023, the Office of the Press Secretary said in a statement. “It’s the first time that I’ve met President Xi Jinping and I was very happy that we were able to have this opportunity here in the APEC Meeting in Bangkok to have a bilateral meeting,” Marcos said. “The bilateral meetings are really just a kind of getting-to-know-you and that was the same with our meeting,” the Filipino leader said.
Marcos said he and Xi met at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel before proceeding to the APEC Gala Dinner set on the eve of the Leaders’ Retreat. “Whatever details that need to be discussed between the Philippines and China will be taken up during his visit,” the OPS said. Marcos described his first meeting with Xi as “a very pleasant exchange.” Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo helped “set the tone of the meeting” with China’s leader, Marcos said. “They had a few minutes of recollecting the meetings that they have had, which I think helped the tone of the meeting. So I am looking forward to January and the state visit to China,” he said.
Last week, Marcos pushed for the finalization of a Code of Conduct on the South China Sea during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Cambodia. The code seeks to direct the behavior of claimant countries in the South China Sea to avoid confrontations in the strategic waterway where 60 percent of seaborne goods pass by annually. In an interview en route to Cambodia, Marcos said that it would be impossible for him to meet Chinese leaders without bringing up the South China Sea issue.
Overlapping claims in the South China Sea and China’s illegal militarization of shoals and reefs in the area have been a sour point between Asia’s largest economy and 5 Southeast Asian countries that are also situated along the disputed waterway. In 2016, an international arbitration court invalidated China’s sweeping claims in the West Philippine Sea and noted that the Philippines was the rightful claimant of the marine resource-rich area off the coast of Palawan.
Source: news.abs-cbn.com
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