MAURO GIA SAMONTE

EIGHT senators are ready to file Senate Resolution 761 expressing, as The Manila Times front page story the other day put it, “grave concern over the increasing militarization by China in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).” The resolution depicts the highest level of alarm taken by the country since the Scarborough Shoal standoff beginning in April 2012. That incident in which the Philippine Navy sent a ship to drive away a Chinese vessel fishing in the waters called Bajo de Masinloc by local folk teetered on the brink of a shooting encounter when China promptly sent in its own flotilla of sea vessels to protect the Chinese fishermen. By the end of the impasse, the Philippines’ starship BRP Gregorio del Pilar together with other navy boats had backed off – the sorry picture of the Philippines’ learning, in the words of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, “to its cost” the lesson that though China is not a war-hungry nation, neither is it a country that will back away from a fight when “pushed against the wall.”

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