NEW YORK CITY – The increasing tension between the Philippines and China in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) is an issue that also concerns Filipino-Americans here.
Philippine Consul General in New York Senen Mangalile said that there are many different strata of the Filipino community in the United States, including those who are born in America and professionals who have come to pursue graduate studies or work, but the WPS is a unifying factor for them.
“Their perception of what happens in the Philippines is still strong. They are invested because they have families back home. On average, I would say that an average Filipino-American in this region has an awareness of what’s going on over there,” Mangalile told Filipino reporters who visited the Philippine Center in New York on Friday, April 26 (US time), as part of the “Friends, Partners, Allies” program of the US Embassy and US Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF).
According to Mangalile, a 2022 US Census Bureau report showed that there were around 4.4 million Filipinos in the US, about 416,000 of them were in New York.
“Many of them will support certain activities that give them more information about what’s happening [in the West Philippine Sea] and a lot of them are sympathetic to the Philippines and they understand that everything that goes on there is a threat to their families,” he noted.
China, which claims majority of the South China Sea (SCS), has opposed what it calls “exclusive” grouping in the waters even as the Philippine government calls out the former’s aggressive and coercive actions towards Philippine vessels in the WPS.
To assert its sovereignty in the WPS, a portion in the SCS that is within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the country, the Philippines has been linking with treaty ally US and other “like-minded” nations and building up its deterrence capabilities.
Mangalile explained that such view by China is because each country perceives what happens to the world “from the lens of their own interest.”
“[China] sees any threats to its rights as something that has to be strongly countered and that is to be expected,” he said.
Earlier this month, President Marcos, US President Joe Biden, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also held their first-ever trilateral summit in Washington as the three countries called out China’s aggression in the South China Sea, and agreed to cooperate to defend their interests in the region.
“There is an alignment of interest. If there’s anything that prompt nations to cooperate and deepen relationships, it’s the alignment of interests,” Mangalile said.