Speaker Martin Romualdez. FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives and the Senate can expect to have more high-level talks with China’s National People’s Congress in 2023, House Speaker and Leyte 1st District Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez said on Wednesday.
Romualdez, in an interview with the Office of the Press Secretary, said that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had a very productive engagement with Li Zhanshu, chairman of China’s National People’s Congress.
The House leader is in China as part of the President’s official delegation for the Chief Executive’s state visit to the said country — the first of his trips for 2023.
“Well, this morning’s high-level meeting with the President of the National Congress of the People’s Republic of China was a very positive engagement. He says that — His Excellency Li Zhanshu — (he) encouraged that we have high-level exchanges between their parliament and our Congress,” Romualdez said.
“He feels and believes that our relations should be deepened and strengthened through our legislative bodies, having active coordination and more engagements and meetings. So, that’s why we will look forward to the invitations that have actually been extended in the previous years, but due to COVID, it did not materialize,” he added.
Romualdez said meetings canceled due to the pandemic may resume within the year now that China is opening up.
“But now that China is opening up this year, we look forward to seeing these some engagements and these exchanges between the Congress of China and the Congress and Senate of the Philippines come to fruition in the year 2023,” he said.
“That will go a long way in harmonizing and resolving any differences and deepening and strengthening the relations of both countries,” he added.
While relations between the two countries have improved over the years, it was once strained due to a territorial row over the West Philippine Sea (WPS).
The Philippines, under the late former president Benigno Aquino III brought its case to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which ruled that China has no historical or legal basis for claiming sovereignty over the WPS.
Despite that, China has continued to build structures and deploy vessels within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Just this November, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel forcibly took what was believed to be Chinese space debris that landed inside Philippine waters.
READ: PCG chief meets Chinese ambassador, tackles WPS incident
In the first quarter of 2021, over 200 Chinese maritime militia vessels were found moored near the Julian Felipe Reef. The said reef is just 175 nautical miles west of Bataraza, Palawan, well inside the country’s EEZ