Philippine President Promises Retaliation Against Chinese Attack

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos promised a “proportionate, deliberate and reasonable” retaliation against China on Thursday in response to a Chinese attack on a Philippine vessel days earlier. The attack damaged the ship and injured three soldiers in Manila’s maritime territory.

The attack: China claims nearly the entire South China Sea as its own, including regions that international law stipulates belong to other nations, such as the Philippines.

On March 23, a Philippine ship was bringing supplies to Filipino troops near Second Thomas Shoal, an area well within its territory. To assert China’s unlawful claims over this territory, the Chinese Coast Guard blocked the ship and fired a powerful water cannon at it.

Provoked? The Philippines is the United States’ oldest treaty ally in Asia. Washington has warned that it will protect Manila if China attempts to seize its territory. China claims that America’s efforts to uphold international law by supporting the Philippines are to blame for Chinese aggression.

Relying on the backing of external forces … the Philippine side has frequently infringed on rights and provoked and created trouble at sea, as well as spreading false information to mislead the international community’s perception of the issue, which is, so to speak, going further and further down a dangerous road.
—Sr. Col. Wu Qian, Ministry of National Defense spokesperson

Response: “We seek no conflict with any nation, more so nations that purport and claim to be our friends,” Marcos said on Thursday, “but we will not be cowed into silence, submission or subservience.”

He threatened to respond to these attacks with a “countermeasure package that is proportionate, deliberate and reasonable in the face of the open, unabating and illegal, coercive, aggressive and dangerous attacks by agents of the China Coast Guard and the Chinese Maritime Militia,” adding, “Filipinos do not yield.”

Where this is leading: In a 2016 article titled “China Is Steering the World Toward War,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote:

Ever since Xi Jinping took over as general secretary of the Communist Party of China, his administration has been militarizing the South China Sea and working to push the United States out of East Asia. …

China is intimidating the nations of Southeast Asia into submission to its will. It is forcing these countries to do what it wants. Everything is headed in the direction of war.

In the years since that was written, China’s intimidation tactics have grown more aggressive. World War iii is coming, and China will play a major role in it.