Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte promised a bloody war if China chooses to invade the Philippines, reported Inquirer.net.
“I guarantee to them that if they invade our country, it would be bloody,” Duterte told Philippine armed forces at the Second Infantry Batallion at Camp Capinpin in Razel Wednesday.
China and the Philippines have claimed overlapping territories in the South China Sea, including the prized Scarborough Shoal. Relations between the two countries have been especially tense since the Philippines decided to unilaterally file for arbitration with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. The tribunal ruled against China’s vast territorial claims on July 12.
China rejects both the authority of the arbitration tribunal and the ruling, arguing that its claims are “indisputable.”
Duterte said, “We will not raise hell now over the judgement, but there will come a time that we have to do some reckoning about this,” reported the Philippine Star.
Special envoy and former president of the Philippines Fidel Ramos met with China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fu Ying earlier in August, which prompted a joint statement calling for “informal discussions focused on the need to engage in further talks to build trust and confidence to reduce tensions to pave the way for overall cooperation.”
This call for peace was considered a major breakthrough for the severely-strained China-Philippines relationship, reported Reuters.
“I hope China is dealing with us in good faith. They seem to be conciliatory,” Duterte said, but he fears that the two sides may struggle to understand one another. If a misunderstanding occurs during peace talks, the Philippines, according to the president, will fight for its desired territorial holdings.
Duterte told the troops, “We will not give it to them easily. It would be with the bones of our soldiers, including my own. We will not allow any country to invade the Philippines…We will not allow any country to bamboozle us.”
This warning to China comes on the heels of a Department of National Defense request for 20,000 additional soldiers.
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