‘Sounds like a threat’: Marcos to summon Chinese envoy over ‘use of force’ remark

MANILA — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Friday he would summon China’s ambassador after his remark that Beijing could “easily win” a conflict with Manila, which the Philippine leader said sounded “like a threat.” 

Marcos said the Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan’s comment “was not a very diplomatic statement to be made.”

“Well, it sounds very much to me like a threat,” Marcos said in a chance interview after his attendance at the 125th Founding Anniversary of the Philippine Coast Guard.

Asked if he would summon Jing, Marcos said, “That deserves a discussion between the ambassador and myself.”  

“We perhaps would like to understand what exactly it is that he means,” he added.

The ambassador’s remarks came a day after Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro labelled Beijing a regional “troublemaker”.

“We should feel fortunate enough that you have a neighbour like China in this region,” Jing told local reporters in Manila on Thursday.

“If we want to use force, we may easily win. But no, we will not choose force, and we love peace,” he said after giving a speech at a school in Manila.

Jing added that the troublemaker label was “nonsense”, while accusing Manila of harassing Chinese workers and teachers, without offering specific examples.

In a response late Thursday, the Philippine foreign affairs department bemoaned comments it said were “hardly helpful” given the two countries’ complicated ties.

“It is regrettable that Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan today had a poor choice of words that would seem to convey a thinly veiled threat of the use of force,” it said in a statement.

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, and Philippine and Chinese ships have engaged in repeated confrontations in recent years, some leading to collisions and injuries.