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☆ Standing Up to China, Philippine Leader Courts New Network of Partners
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-16 | by ( Sui-Lee Wee | Camille Elemia | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

With China aggressively asserting its claims on the South China Sea, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Philippines spent his first year on the job beefing up Manila’s alliance with its oldest ally, the United States. Mr. Marcos is adding a new intensity to his muscular foreign policy at a critical moment in his country’s territorial dispute with Beijing. In January, Mr. Marcos and the leaders of Vietnam, another country fighting off Chinese claims to the crucial waterway, pledged closer cooperation between their coast guards. This month, Mr. Marcos clinched a maritime cooperation deal with Australia. “It has to be recognized that the South China Sea handles 60 percent of the trade of the entire world.

Persons: Ferdinand R, Marcos Jr, Marcos, it’s, Mr Organizations: Maritime, Australia, South China, ASEAN, Association of Southeast Asian Nations Locations: China, Philippines, United States, Beijing, Vietnam, Europe, South, Berlin

Taylor Swift has descended on Southeast Asia, or one small part of it at least: All of her six sold-out shows are in Singapore, the region’s wealthiest nation. The shows — and the undisclosed price that Singapore paid to host them — have also generated diplomatic tension with two of its neighbors, Thailand and the Philippines. Last month, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin of Thailand said publicly that Singapore had paid Ms. Swift up to $3 million per show on the condition that she play nowhere else in Southeast Asia. A lawmaker in the Philippines later said that was not “what good neighbors do.”

Persons: Taylor Swift, Swift’s, Srettha, Swift, ” Organizations: Singapore Locations: Southeast Asia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines

☆ How a Decaying Warship Beached on a Tiny Shoal Provoked China’s Ire
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-11 | by ( Camille Elemia | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

For more than two decades, it has been an unlikely flashpoint in the South China Sea: a rusty, World War II-era ship beached on a tiny reef that has become a symbol of Philippine resistance against Beijing. The Philippine government ran the vessel aground in 1999 on the Second Thomas Shoal, a contested reef 120 miles off the coast of the western province of Palawan. The dilapidated warship, known as the Sierra Madre, will never sail again. But it has remained there ever since, a marker of the Philippines’ claim to the shoal and an effort to prevent China from seizing more of the disputed waters. On Friday, a reporter for The New York Times was among a group given rare access to a Philippine resupply mission, first boarding a Coast Guard ship — the BRP Cabra — and then an inflatable dinghy to get within 1,000 yards of the Sierra Madre.

Persons: Thomas Organizations: Beijing, Philippine, The New York Times, Coast Guard, BRP, — Locations: South China, Palawan, Sierra Madre, Philippines, China, Philippine

The Nobel Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa on Tuesday was acquitted by a Philippine court of tax fraud, the latest legal victory in her fight for the survival of her news site Rappler, which has come to represent the precariousness of the nation’s press freedoms. A regional trial court in Pasig City, near Manila, found that Ms. Ressa did not violate the country’s tax code, according to the ruling. It was the fifth and final tax-related charge against Ms. Ressa, who faced a fine and up to 10 years in prison, and her publication, according to a statement from Rappler. Ms. Ressa, the Philippines’ most prominent journalist, has been the target of harassment and intimidation since she founded the news site in 2012. She has faced a series of civil and criminal cases, including charges of tax evasion and violations of foreign ownership rules.

Persons: Maria Ressa, Ressa, Ms, ” Locations: Philippine, Pasig City, Manila, Philippines

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