China’s Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang to visit PHL as ties enter ‘new era’ —Beijing envoy

Chinese President Xi Jinping is planning to make his first-ever state visit to the Philippines next year while Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will fly to the country for an official visit and to attend the ASEAN summit in November as relations between the once-hostile Asian neighbors enter a "new era," Beijing's top envoy to Manila said.

"Ever since President Duterte took office, our relationship has dramatically improved. Relations, cooperations have entered into a new era, so we need to continue to properly handle the disputes that we have," Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua told journalists at a diplomatic reception Monday evening.

Chinese Premier Li is going to participate in the ASEAN summit meetings in Manila in November and separately pay an official visit to the Philippines, the first such visit by a Chinese premier to the country in about 10 years, Zhao said.

Then next year, Chinese President Xi plans to pay the Philippines his first-ever visit, he said.

"President Duterte has been to China twice and it's time for our president to come," Zhao said. The date of Xi's visit is still being finalized, but Zhao said "definitely he will come."

"It is going to be hugely significant, it's going to be very, very fruitful," Zhao said of Xi's Philippine visit.

While the vastly improved relations benefit both countries, Zhao said they "benefit the Philippines in particular," saying Philippine trade with China has increased by more than 20 percent, the largest increase among Manila's trading partners and elevating China as the country's number one trading partner, Zhao said.

"What is more important, which is quite mutually beneficial to the farmers here, the increase of tropical fruits, banana, pineapple that have been exported to China has increased by 50 percent since the beginning of this year and the tourists coming to the Philippines increased by nearly 40 percent," Zhao said.

"That now stands about 750,000...By the end of this year, the growth rate will exceed one million people, despite the troubles you have in the south," Zhao said, referring to the ongoing Marawi City siege and other insurgency-related violence in southern Mindanao region that have driven away foreign tourists.

Zhao also said the latest incident involving Manila and Beijing at Sandy Cay in the disputed West Philippine Sea "has been successfully addressed through diplomatic channels."

In a dramatic shift in Philippine foreign policy, Duterte took steps to mend ties with China after he won the presidency in June last year while berating the country's treaty ally, Washington, for criticizing his deadly war against illegal drugs.

An international arbitration tribunal in The Hague announced in July 12 last year a sweeping victory for the Philippines on the lawsuit it filed against China over their South China Sea disputes. The tribunal under the Permanent Court of Arbitration invalidated Beijing's historical claims to nearly the entire South China Sea.

China ignored the ruling at the time and did not participate in the arbitration, which ruled based on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas, or UNCLOS, an international treaty which China, the Philippines and more than 150 other countries have signed.

Instead of pressuring China to immediately comply with the landmark arbitration ruling, Duterte decided to indefinitely set aside the decision but promised to raise it with China at a still-unspecified time in his six-year presidency.

Duterte's move saved China from a planned Philippine government plan, hatched during his predecessor Benigno Aquino III's time, to launch an international campaign, including in the United Nations, to pressure Chinese compliance to the arbitration decision.

Nationalists and other groups criticized Duterte's gambit as undermining a rare international legal victory that clearly specifies the Philippines' sovereign entitlements to its Exclusive Economic Zone and other disputed areas.

But supporters argued that Duterte's pragmatic approach has reaped immediate benefits, including China's decision to allow back Filipino fishermen to the disputed Scarborough Shoal and the return to normalcy of bilateral relations, specially trade and investment.

"So if you look at the bilateral relationship, I would like you to look at those parts that benefit and will continue to benefit the people of both sides," Zhao told reporters. "We do have trouble but (it's a) tiny part only. We need not to focus on it a and we should (not) let those disputes jeopardize the overall relationship of the two countries." —KG, GMA News