Xi and Biden congratulate Marcos Jnr on election win as China, US vie for influence

Xi vows to strengthen relations with Manila and says the two nations are ‘partners through thick and thin’

Biden tells president-elect he wants to seek close security ties and expand cooperation on a range of issues

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Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jnr celebrates as he greets the crowd outside his headquarters in Mandaluyong, Manila on Wednesday. Photo: AP

Published: 5:00pm, 12 May 2022

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday congratulated Ferdinand Marcos Jnr for his win in the Philippine presidential election and vowed to further strengthen ties with Manila, amid an intensifying US-China competition for influence in the nation.

Xi’s message to Marcos, the son and namesake of the Philippines’ late dictator, came as US President Joe Biden also pledged stronger ties with Manila on the eve of a summit with Southeast Asian nations at the White House.

Despite simmering tensions over the South China Sea dispute, Xi described China and the Philippines as “neighbours facing each other across the sea and partners through thick and thin”, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said bilateral ties “face important opportunities and broad prospects”. Photo: AP

He said bilateral ties had been “continuously consolidated and improved” in recent years, referring to outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte seeking to pivot away from Washington and play down the maritime dispute in exchange for closer trade ties with Beijing.

“Both China and the Philippines stand at a critical stage of development, and bilateral relations face important opportunities and broad prospects,” Xi said, according to the statement.

“I attach great importance to the development of Sino-Philippine relations, and am willing to establish a good working relationship with president-elect Marcos, and adhere to good-neighbourly friendship.”

Chinese ambassador to Manila Huang Xilian was also upbeat about a closer relationship under Marcos Jnr, whose family has deep ties with Beijing that can be traced back to his father in the early 1970s.

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