China’s delivery of donated vaccines was “help extended” and “no submission expected”, according to DFA Sec. Teodoro Locsin Jr.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Sunday said that China’s delivery of donated vaccines was “help extended” and “no submission expected”.
In a report on Manila Bulletin, Locsin said that China didn’t make any faintest suggestion that the COVID-19 vaccines that it extended to its neighbors — including the Philippines — have a concession.
Locsin made his comment in the context of the brewing situation at the Julian Felipe Reef in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) wherein about 44 Chinese vessels were still moored and refused to leave the said area despite calls from Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana for them to do so.
According to Locsin, China’s delivery of donated COVID-19 vaccine doses was “help extended” and “no submission expected”
“There is not even the faintest suggestion from China that the vaccine it generously provides has an exchange in mind be it sovereignty or concession; it is just, Wang Yi said, what good neighbors do for each other. Chinese not heap. It is help extended; no submission expected,” Locsin said in a tweet.
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In a separate tweet, Locsin dismissed the Chinese Embassy statement as the foreign secretary maintained that the Philippines will not yield “but die or trigger World War”.
On Sunday, Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary Lorenzana lashed out at the Chinese Embassy in Manila for justifying the presence of its “maritime militias” in Julian Felipe Reef in the West Philippine Sea — an area within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
According to Lorenzana, the Chinese Embassy’s disregard of the international law — specifically the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to which China was a signatory — was “appalling.”
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