Pakistan, July 26 -- It's hard to view the Philippines' recent provocative actions at Ren'ai Jiao and Huangyan Dao in the South China Sea as merely coincidence. As Manila hosted three days of ASEAN-centered foreign ministers' talks, its decision to orchestrate maritime clashes with China before and during this period was a clear attempt to play a high-profile blame game against China. Such a tactic is consistent with the practice of Manila since 2023: feeding information on every sea encounter to the media to publicly put pressure on Beijing.

At a time when almost all other Southeast Asian nations are seeking closer comprehensive ties with China, the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s administration is isolating itself from that tr...