President-elect Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. said Thursday he would engage with China "consistently and with a firm voice" with regard to sea disputes between Manila and Beijing.
The 64-year-old Marcos, who will assume office on June 30, said he would not allow "not a single square millimeter" of the area where the country has sovereign rights to be trampled upon.
"How do we do that? We talk to China consistently with a firm voice... We have to continue to discuss with them the conflicting claims that we have with China and that China has with other members of the ASEAN," he said.
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Marcos said there is no wiggle room when it comes to the Philippines' rights in the West Philippine Sea, adding sovereignty is "sacred" and must not be compromised in any way.
"We will not allow a single square --- and maybe make it even more smaller --- single square millimeter of our maritime coastal and up to 200-kilometer rights to be trampled upon," he said in an interview with select reporters.
The maritime dispute was one of the topics that Marcos and President Xi Jinping talked about over the phone when the Chinese leader congratulated him for winning in the May 9 elections, he said.
Marcos said he does not subscribe to the old thinking of the Cold War, where countries were either allies of the United States or the then-Soviet Union.
"I think that we have to be just fine with independent foreign policy where we are friends with everyone.... We have to be good neighbors and we ask them to be good neighbors to them. It is of mutual benefit to our countries," he said.
"We have to form alliances and partnerships because no country can do this, can recover or can change the geopolitical situation on their own. And that's why we have to forge partnerships, and those are the partnerships that will keep things stable," he added.
Marcos' predecessor, outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte, also forged friendly ties with China and refused to assert the arbitral ruling that the Philippines won against China in 2016.
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