Philippine President Benigno Aquino III faces a delicate task in China this week: taking up his country’s claim to the troubled waters of the East Sea without undermining the increasingly important economic relationship between the two countries.
China is now the Philippines’ third-largest trading partner, with bilateral trade up 35% to $27.7 billion in 2010, and Manila views its gigantic northern neighbor as a potentially valuable source of investment and tourism. Philippine officials have said they expect Mr. Aquino to sign commitments on this trip, which runs from Tuesday to Saturday, that could generate $50 billion in two-way trade by 2016.

But relations between the two countries have grown distinctly frosty this year over their claims to the East Sea. Mr. Aquino is urging China to join his call to have the United Nations International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea settle a patchwork quilt of competing claims in the East Sea, though Beijing earlier rejected the Philippines’ proposal.

“China’s not to going to throw the dice at a tribunal which could undermine their claim to the entire region,” said Carl Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy at the University of New South Wales and a long-time observer of the East Sea dispute. “There’s too much at stake and China is in a much stronger position.”

After meeting with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, Mr. Aquino plans to visits Xiamen, where his late mother, democracy icon Corazon Aquino, planted a tree on a visit nearly two decades ago.

Mr. Aquino also plans to bring at least 200 Filipino businesspeople to help step up trade and encourage Chinese investment in mining and infrastructure projects that he hopes will ramp up economic growth at home.

Analysts say Mr. Aquino will be wary of doing anything that could trip up his economic mission. Last week he told Chinese media in Manila that the countries’ relationship was like a marriage and that both sides have a role in making it work. But Mr. Aquino is also facing pressure to stand up to China.

“He’ll get criticized if he doesn’t raise the East Sea,” said Ian Storey at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

The Philippines has pressed its claims to the East Sea harder in recent months. Under previous President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and during the early months of Mr. Aquino’s presidency, the Philippines went out of its way to curry favor with China.

Philippine officials have accused Chinese vessels of hindering oil and gas exploration in a portion of the waters known as Reed Bank, and the Philippines has vowed to step up its military capabilities to defend the country’s economic interests. The U.S. has said it will assist the Philippines, a treaty partner, in the event hostilities break out in the East Sea, which in addition to having oil and gas potential is a rich fishery. In June, Vietnam accused a Chinese fishing boat, backed up by two military vessels, of snapping the cables on an oil-exploration craft. That incident followed a similar one in May.

China, which dismisses the complaints of both Vietnam and the Philippines, has said repeatedly that it would prefer to negotiate rights to the East Sea with other claimants individually—according to analysts, out of concern that in a multilateral setting its substantial military and economic power might be diluted. The U.S. angered China last year by lending its support to proposals for multiparty talks.

Source: WSJ