President Marcos said the Philippines needs to "do more" amid the continuous illegal acts of China in the West Philippine Sea as he insisted that the recent violent resupply mission in Ayungin Shoal was a "deliberate act" to stop the country's legitimate operation.

Marcos said while the country has already filed over a hundred protests against China, the Philippine Government must do more than that, although he did not specify further efforts.

He pointed out that the country must do more than just summoning China's ambassador to state the Philippines' stand in every incident involving Chinese vessels.

"[W]e have how many, we have over a hundred protests. We have already made a similar number of demarche, so we have to do more than just that," Marcos said in an interview on the sidelines of the National Employment Summit at the Manila Hotel on Thursday, June 27.

"Kasi papatawag natin yung ambassador, sasabihin natin ito yung position natin, hindi natin gusto yung nangyari (Because we will summon the ambassador, we will state our position, we do not want what happened), and that’s it. But we have to do more than that, so we are doing just that," he stressed.

Neither an armed attack , nor a misunderstanding

The President also backpedaled on Malacañang's earlier statement where it said that the recent incident in the Ayungin Shoal, where Filipino navy troopers were injured, including one whose finger got cut off, when Chinese vessels drove their vessel away, was not an armed attack but a misunderstanding.

He clarified that upon reviewing the actual events during the incident, he dismissed that it was a misunderstanding.

However, he stood by the Palace's initial statement that it was not an armed attack simply because no one was shot in the incident.

"It’s not armed. Walang pumutok. Hindi tayo tinutukan ng baril (No one point a gun at us). But it was a deliberate, it was a deliberate action to stop our people," Marcos said.

"And in the process of that, kinuhanan tayo (they stole from us), they boarded a Philippine vessel and took the equipment from the Philippine vessel. So although there were no arms involved, nonetheless it is still a deliberate action and it is essentially an illegal action that was taken by the Chinese forces," Marcos added.

The Chief Executive insisted that it was not a misunderstanding, and that the Chinese force deliberately approached the Philippine vessel to stop the country's soldiers from performing the resupply mission.