This morning, as I was scrolling through my tweet feed for early morning news before I start my day, I stumbled across Sandra Aguinaldo’s tweet saying that the bilateral meeting between Pres. Aquino and Chinese Pres. Jintao will not push through due to scheduling conflicts.
PNoy was in Russia these weekend together with other world leaders for the APEC Summit. Apart from the many world issues they discussed, the government hoped that PNoy and Pres. Hu Jintao will meet to discuss the territorial disputes happening over the Scarborough Shoal located in the West Philippine Sea, also known as the South China Sea. Over the past months, China has been adamant about keeping the disputed territories as part of their own despite its apparent distance from mainland China. Up to now, no resolution has been successfully achieved from both parties with the Philippines also claiming the disputed territories as her own.
Yet it seems, China is also in no hurry to make amendments or peaceful talks regarding the matter. As shown in this comic strip, China “appears” to be content in “bullying” other nations to submission.
Yet the way I see it, whichever country lays claim to these islands, the call to preserve them remains the same. I know these countries are all after the resources that they can get from these islands. Yet to mine/gather these resources will be tantamount to disrupting the precarious sustainability of our planet. To me, the real issue here is not sovereignty over these islands but rather preservation of them. It is true that these islands contain vast amounts of resources which could promise wealth to the nation who owns them, but it has also been shown that because of man’s greed to harvest resource after resource, the planet is slowly dying.
Continue reading “The Scarborough Shoal Standoff: Unite instead of Divide”
