China ready to work with Marcos administration on 4 key areas

Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian. Photo by Daniza Fernandez

MANILA, Philippines — China is ready to work with the current administration under President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on four key areas.

According to Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian on Wednesday, the four key areas are large-scale agriculture cooperation, infrastructure, energy, and culture and people-to-people exchanges.

“We have taken note of Sona (State of the Nation Address). It’s quite encouraging speech. It has signal a lot of encouraging messages and in line of his idea on national development and national strategy, we are ready to work on four key areas of cooperation,” he said in an ambush interview in Pasay City.

Huang further hoped that China and the Philippines will pursue oil and gas cooperation.

“In the field of that energy you know, that’s on one hand, we hope that we will continue to work on oil and gas cooperation,” he said.

“We hope we were, you know, we start that negotiation and find out some, you know, that’s our solution for the benefits of our two peoples to meet that need, the demand of energy of this country and China,” he added.

Last month, the Philippines ended its talks for planned joint oil and gas exploration in the West Philippine Sea with China upon orders from then President Rodrigo Duterte.

Huang is looking forward to restarting the negotiation anytime with the new administration.

Foreign policy

Meanwhile, Huang said that he was “impressed” when Marcos talked about the country’s foreign policy during the latter’s Sona.

“I’m very impressed when President Bongbong Marcos talked about independent foreign policy. We are still studying the speech of the Sona but I do think that it sends out very encouraging signals and messages to the people of this country or across the world,” said Huang.

During Marcos’ Sona, he asserted that he will not let even a square inch of the Philippine territory be grabbed by another nation.

In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that the Philippines has exclusive sovereign rights over the West Philippine Sea, invalidating Beijing’s nine-dash line in the South China Sea.

JMS