The Philippines is working behind the scenes to enhance its defensive cooperation with Taiwan, the Washington Post said in a report published on Monday.
“It would be hiding from the obvious to say that Taiwan’s security will not affect us,” Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro Jr told the paper in an interview on Thursday last week.
Although there has been no formal change to the Philippines’ diplomatic stance on recognizing Taiwan, Manila is increasingly concerned about Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea, the report said.
The number of Chinese vessels in the seas around the Philippines, as well as Chinese cybersecurity attacks and espionage, have increased, the report said, citing information from the Philippine National Security Council.
The Philippines is “entitled” to negotiate its relationship with Taiwan, given that prior attempts to ease tensions with China have so far found no success, the report quoted Teodoro as saying.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials told the newspaper that security cooperation with Taiwan is “further along” than publicly disclosed, following a new policy by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr that reduced restrictions on exchanges between the two countries.
Filipino academics with ties to the nation’s defense establishment earlier this year participated in forums with high-ranking Taiwanese generals to better understand security thinking in the country, the paper said.
Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration and the Philippine Coast Guard recently carried out joint patrols of the Bashi Channel, it added.
Taiwan also sent observers to a joint US-Philippine-Japan military exercise called Kamandag that took place in the Batanes islands, it said.
Batanes is the Philippines’ northernmost province and less than 200km south of Taiwan.
Although Philippine officials did not say the exercise targeted China, the report cited analysts who said they were clearly meant to counter Chinese ships.
An anonymous Taiwanese adviser said that although personnel did not participate, the two countries are “closer and closer” in defense matters, the newspaper reported.
In a news release last month, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of National Defense said that the Philippines has “tied itself to the US war chariot, and become a coconspirator in destabilizing the region.”
Due to the Philippines’ proximity to Taiwan, Taiwan’s large Filipino population and US defense agreements with the country, one Filipino academic told the paper that “we’d be kidding ourselves not to see the necessity of working with Taiwan.”
The report quoted another professor as saying that “Taiwan is our buffer from an expansionist China.”
The recent visit to Taiwan by two senior Philippine officials and one former official caused “severe diplomatic complications,” Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Theresa Lazaro said in a letter that the newspaper obtained.
The report also quoted Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) as saying that while the two countries were diplomatically distant before, they have “started to smile at each other.”
