China did not make any faintest suggestion that the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) vaccines that it extends to its neighbors, including the Philippines, have concession, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said on Sunday. 

Locsin made this comment in the context of the brewing situation at the Julian Felipe Reef in the West Philippine Sea where about 44 Chinese vessels are still moored and refuse to leave despite calls from Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana for them to do so. 

The foreign secretary said China’s delivery of vaccines is “help extended” and “no submission expected.”

“There is not even the faintest suggestion from China that the vaccine it generously provides has an exchange in mind be it sovereignty or concession; it is just, Wang Yi said, what good neighbors do for each other. Chinese not heap. It is help extended; no submission expected,” he said in a tweet.

Lorenzana, on Sunday, lashed out at the Chinese Embassy in Manila for justifying the presence of its ‘maritime militias’ in Julian Felipe Reef, an area within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ). 

The defense chief said the Chinese Embassy’s disregard of the international law, specifically the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to which China is a signatory, is “appalling.”

“The Philippines’ claims stand on solid grounds while China’s do not,” he added, in obvious reference to the July 2016 Award rendered by the Arbitral Tribunal in The Hague, granting the Philippine petition to invalidate China’s excessive “nine-dash-line” claim in the South China Sea. 

Lorenzana's latest tough stance was in response to a statement issued by the Chinese Embassy saying that the Julian Felipe Reef is part of China’s Nansha Islands or the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.  

Locsin, in a separate tweet, dismissed the Chinese Embassy statement as he maintained that the Philippines will not yield “but die or trigger World War”.

“China can say what it wants, Philippines will do what it must keep what’s hers by right. Irrelevant whether we possess commensurate military power to meet the challenge; we will not yield but die -- or trigger World War 3. Not a bad outcome; living is overrated. Honor is all,” he said.